Of House Guests and Winter Twins
by KLMeri
Summary: Fairy tale AU. He wants to be human, she wants to be him, and only the man caught between both has the power to set them free.   One-sided K/M. - COMPLETE
1. Introduction

**Story is here.**

* * *

><p><strong>Title<strong>: Of House Guests and Winter Twins  
><strong>Author<strong>: klmeri  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: Star Trek AOS  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Kirk, McCoy, Jocelyn, Joanna, others  
><strong>Pairings<strong>: Leonard/Jocelyn, pre-Kirk/McCoy (if you squint/pray?)  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: 27408  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: flagrant self-insertion (I daresay you'll have to read it to believe it) and potential sniffle-y material  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: I have no rights to the Star Trek characters except to play with them fictionally as a child might play with a Ken and Barbie doll—that is, for personal entertainment purposes only. I do own the rights to my brain, however.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: AU. He wants to be human, she wants to be him, and only the man caught between both has the power to set them free.  
><strong>AN #1**: Written for **space_wrapped**; based on the following prompt: _Fairy Tale fic! A lonely winter sprite spends his days staring in through the frost-covered windows at Leonard McCoy and his small child. One-sided romance to be sure, but if you can swing the boys getting together then you get double cookies. Lots of fascination and secret (perhaps even forbidden) longing on sprite!Jim's part._  
>This story may not entirely resemble the prompt. There is longing (of a kind), sprite!Jim (erm, not so much, unless sprites are beasties?), and winter (oh yes, definitely that). This prompt is awesome, though. It launched me into a writing winter wonderland I'll never forget.<br>If anyone can do it proper justice, please save the prompter from disappointment!  
><strong>AN #2**: This is one of those fictions which is either an instant win or an epic failure. I have prepared for the latter by hiding under my bedcovers until someone kindly informs me otherwise.  
><strong>AN #3**: I have never claimed to have a mundane imagination. Please see above warnings and be warned.  
><strong>AN #4**: I don't have a mundane ego, either.

Recommended read either one of two ways:

1) straight-through; whereupon, at the end, you may go _wtf was she thinking?_

or

2) skip to the fairy tale; see the titled sections within each part.

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><p><strong>Part I<strong>

The Fey Child  
>The Tailor and the Maiden<br>The Beast

**Part II**

The Invisible Prince  
>The Snow Girl and the Red Wren<br>The Winter Twins


	2. Part I

**Of House Guests and Winter Twins**  
>by klmeri<p>

* * *

><p>Admittedly, the business of story-telling is not easy. It requires a constant state of daydreaming, practical application, more daydreaming, and some degree of connivance. To tell an unbelievable story in a believable fashion, the story-teller often begins with a hint of truth. Since the story to follow has elements of both the mysterious and the fantastical, here is my plainly told true-tale of how it came to be.<p>

**[+++++]**

Part I

Space_Wrapped.

I vacillated in a brief moment of indecision before clicking the Post Comment button. Thereafter, I realized I had committed myself to the next two and a half months of pondering when I would get around to writing a story I had every intention of making great and no intention of spending my free time upon. I am not a procrastinator, per se, but I am a busy woman whose priorities fall somewhere between the categories of _making money_ and _trying not to go insane while making money_.

Soon, confirmation came through email that I had the prompt of my choosing, and thus I laid my head upon my pillow that night with many thoughts of where I might begin a fairy tale—a tale of love, that is—starring the characters James Kirk and Leonard McCoy. Inevitably I fell asleep, having mentally plotted very little, on the drowsy thought of _tomorrow. _Tomorrow I would write something worthwhile.

How easily we can fool ourselves.

Indeed, tomorrow and many days thereafter were filled with an abundance of activity but no writing. On occasion guilt would trouble me because I knew I had made a commitment to entertain and yet had not made an effort towards that commitment. I assuaged most of this guilt by counting the days on the calendar above my office desk to be assured there was plenty of time left to create a fairy tale that would pass muster among the many wonderful Kirk/McCoy stories certain to be presented in the month of December.

This, of course, was when a series of strange occurrences began. Looking back, perhaps I failed to notice a few of them but in my defense I was preoccupied with the trials and trivialities of real life. The first occurrence which did catch my attention was quite a simple if unusual thing—so simple, in fact, I automatically dismissed it as harmless.

One morning I was amidst my normal routine (the act of balancing a coffee thermos on my portfolio case while digging for the car keys my purse seemed to have eaten) when I became aware of a great cacophony above my head. In the large oak tree beside my apartment building, there were birds—noisy ones. Yes, noisy birds in a tree are rarely considered unusual, except this circumstance was far from normal: birds of _every kind _lined the oak's long and sturdy branches. It was such an extraordinary spectacle I forgot what I was attempting to do.

A neighbor who often walked his dog about that time of day was standing on the concrete sidewalk gaping up at the tree. We both ignored the excited yipping of his Yorkie.

"Would you look at that!" he exclaimed.

I did look, squinting against the sun. "Huh" was my only coherent comment. High above, an owl cocked its head sideways and hooted at me somewhat querulously, as though he was greatly dissatisfied at having his daytime nap interrupted and I was to blame. I gave a brief thought to Hitchcock's famous _The Birds_, shuddered, and reeled in my wandering mind.

"Oh crap," I gasped, brain back on track, and began to chant "Late late late!" like Alice's white rabbit. The display of birds—hawks, woodpeckers, and peacocks, oh my!—faded into the background. Besides, I knew my boss would not accept an excuse of "But, Helen, it was a veritable zoo of fowl! Have you ever seen a mallard in a tree?" for tardiness.

I was told later the birds were messengers (because someone thought of carrier pigeons and took the idea a little too far) and their message was meant solely for me. It was an approval of my task of fairy tale writing and encouragement to stop ignoring said task; but sadly I did not speak or comprehend the language of birds. They squawked or sang shrilly and I drove out of the parking lot none-the-wiser.

Barring a jittery squirrel, the oak tree was empty when I returned home at the end of the work day. I skirted around drying patches of bird poop on the ground, mindful of my new high heels, and trekked up the stairs to my home. Then I closed the door, effectively shutting out the world, and did not care to open it again until morning.

As I said, I paid little heed to anything strange.

Not long thereafter, upon returning home from a short weekend vacation, I discovered my apartment in an immaculate state. Neat, orderly, and sparkling pristine, to be precise. The laundry had been sorted; the dishes washed and tucked away, even the two year-old dust bunnies dispersed.

I called my mother. "Did you stop by while I was gone and clean?" I asked her. I knew she had a hatred of menial work but I couldn't fathom who else it might have been.

She thought I was joking. I assured her I was not. I could hear the rolling of her eyes as she argued, "Who cares if it was a friend, a vandal, or a Brownie? At least your house is tidy! Now why don't you come over here and fix mine?"

I ignored that last comment and pictured something akin to the scene from Snow White where she and her forest friends engage in a sing-along while sweeping the floor and scrubbing dishes. The thought was so absurd, I laughed. I shouldn't have.

It had been a Brownie, though I couldn't have known this at the time. The Brownie had been sent to investigate the current status of my fairy tale work-in-progress. After browsing my laptop's hard-drive and concluding the story was still lamentably unwritten, the Brownie had extra time to kill. Hence it cleaned my apartment, quite dismayed by the sight of dirt and dust.

(Later, when I argued the Brownie had violated my privacy, I was told plainly, "Then why do you leave your things lying carelessly about?" So this is my word of caution to you: never assume your personal electronics are safe anywhere but by your side. Brownies are, it seems, genius but morally oblivious hackers.)

The occurrences grew odder.

My mailbox turned up handfuls of acorns. (I never quite figured out the meaning of those acorns. Payment?) The left shoe of my favorite pair of boots continually disappeared and reappeared in random places, like the top of a bookshelf, in the kitchen garbage can, and at the bottom of the laundry hamper. (This made for an aggravating morning when I wanted to wear them.) Someone also lovingly placed a raven's feather upon my doorstep for five consecutive days.

How did I know they were raven's feathers? At the time I did not. I imagined some poor black bird (a large one, by the size of each feather which had been lost) to whom the feathers had belonged, stroked the very first one in brief admiration, and then tossed them one-by-one into the communal trash bin by the front entrance to the building. They were pretty to my human eyes but also useless.

The raven's feathers were a warning. One might debate the point of sending a warning that, in general, nobody recognizes and I normally would, but a particular someone would be miffed and _he _was never my favorite of house guests.

Having ignored, dismissed, and otherwise explained away all the strange things that happened within a month's time, I was caught unawares by the final—and most remarkable—one of all. It happened on November 6th. This was a Sunday, marked clearly in my mind for it had been the end of Daylight Savings Time and I celebrated the extra hour by sleeping in. That fateful evening, I let myself into my apartment after a trip to the supermarket to find my kitchen already occupied.

I can recall only a few things from that initial impression: the intruder was tall, thin as a willow, male; and he met my shocked stare with the most dispassionate, light-colored eyes I had ever seen.

I screamed.

He curled his upper lip in distaste. "What a dreadful sound."

I screamed again and clutched my purse against my chest for protection. In my fear, I hadn't sense enough to take out my cell phone and threaten to call the police.

The intruder sighed at me, apparently put-upon. "_Humans. _I am not here to terrorize you—well," he corrected himself almost lazily, "not unless you fail to meet our standards."

This caused me to whimper. "G-Get out! Get out of my house!" Now my sense was returning. "I've phoned the police!"

He tilted his head at me, not unlike the owl some weeks previous. "You have done nothing but scream," he said pointedly. "Besides, no mortal is capable enough to _arrest me_." He said the last part curiously as though it was a new addition to his vocabulary.

Which could be true, I thought in that instance. Here was a brand new serial killer and I his first victim!

"What do you want?" I said, frightened. It never occurred to me before why clichés were, well, clichéd; only until you find yourself in such a situation, do you instinctively plead things exactly like _what do you want?_ and _are you going to hurt me?_

Rather than answering my question, he circled the opposite end of the kitchen counter and peeked into one of the abandoned grocery bags. "Where is your wine?" he wanted to know. "I could find no wine in your cupboards."

The thought of a stranger waiting to accost me in my home, nosing about my belongings or not, was petrifying. I said, by way of attempting to calm myself, "I don't drink" like we were two acquaintances having a slightly awkward chat.

He peered at me as he had peered into the plastic bag, less disinterested but not entirely convinced I had a relevant purpose. "You do not drink wine," he reasoned slowly, voice soft and musical. "Why?"

It finally occurred to me this interloper wasn't human. He had ears whose outer shells ended in delicate points and his eyes were slightly too large. His triangular face was framed by long fine hair, a sort of muted brown like the hair itself wasn't sure if it had color. When he moved, it was with a preternatural grace.

I thought I could almost pinpoint what sort of creature he was; the name danced elusively in the back of my mind. Before I could stop my foolish hand, I reached out to touch one of his ears. "What are you?"

He drew back, hunching in on himself like an animal, and the flash in his eyes was a clear warning. Once out of range of my person he said, almost menacingly, "I am your supervisor."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

My bewilderment eased his tension. The intruder straightened and lifted his chin to peer down his nose at me. "You are writer klmeri," he stated matter-of-factly. "You are assigned the task of writing a fairy tale." His tone spoke clearly of his strong disbelief that I could accomplish such a thing.

No writer appreciates unjustified criticism. I puffed, and my chin went up too. "It's pronounced k-l-meri." I sounded out my pseudonym as _kay-ell-mary_. "How did you find out where I live?" I eyed him. "Are you some weirdo internet stalker?"

His slight bow was mocking. "Hello, k-l-meri. No, I am not affiliated with the internet. The flower sprites and gnomes manage Faerie's IT division." He gave a sniff of indignation.

My eyes lit up at the mention of Faerie, for I had an unhealthy obsession with subject. "Tir na nOg?" I squealed, mangling the Gaelic pronunciation. Then, with a delighted gasp, "Are you a Sidhe?"

Now _he _eyed me warily. Apparently the Sidhe did not like the fact that I had dropped my purse and was crowding in on him because he turned abruptly (smoothly) on the heel of his soft leather boot and exited the kitchen. His lilt floated back to me. "Come," he ordered.

I followed because I was more entranced by his presence than the powerful magic in his voice. I had many questions to ask, and I now desperately wanted to touch the tip of a pointed ear, if only to assure myself I wasn't passed out on the kitchen floor in the middle of a lucid dream. But the Sidhe did not allow me any courtesy or affirmation of my mental health whatsoever.

When I entered my bedroom, he pointed austerely at my laptop. "_Write_," I was commanded.

Again, his magic did not seem to have an effect on me. I looked at my laptop in dismay. "I can't," I said with no small amount of sadness. "Tomorrow is Monday and I haven't washed my clothes for work—" My stomach growled. "—or eaten dinner." I crossed my arms with a bit of dramatic petulance. "And I can't think of a single thing to write!"

He interrupted my protest with another put-upon sigh and muttered to himself about the insanity of some queen named Mab. When he noticed I was listening with interest, he fell silent.

I felt bad. "Look, I'd love to write the fairy tale, okay? I _want _to, believe me, but there's no time right now. Couldn't you come back tomorrow?"

He looked unhappy. "You humans are so blithely obtuse!" He explained to me then about the plethora of signs from Faerie I had missed (some of which I did not mention and intend not to, as I am embarrassed by my lack of keen observation) and that I needed to shape up and get to work on my story because the High Council of the Court was getting impatient. Once impatience took root, bad things tended to happen—and would happen, mainly to me.

I had not realized anyone cared about the prompt except me and perhaps the person who created the prompt. I was astonished. "But what's so important about a fairy tale?"

"Fairy tales are ridiculous," he said with contempt. "Nonsensical. What wolf is going to dress in an old woman's clothes just to eat a red-hooded little girl? He would simply snap the foolish human's neck with his jaws if she crossed into his territory. He would only eat her if he was starving."

"You do realize this is a modern age," I said, inexplicably nervous, "with guns and bombs and stuff. So, um, wolves are going extinct."

He was exasperated. "By the Greenman's beard, this century is ridiculous!"

Ridiculous was clearly one of his favorite words, but I held my tongue and continued to listen.

The Sidhe took an agitated turn by my bedroom window (the movement seemed swift and fluid to my human eyes) before returning to his rant. "Can you comprehend what you've reduced my people to with your Disney and your non-religion and, ugh, internet? We are fading out of existence," he said, "because humans haven't the sense to believe in us. So we must resort to menial tactics like blogging. Do you know," he almost raged in his light cadence, "that over half of my readership are Twilight enthusiasts? _I am not a vampire._"

I giggled. He glared. I asked if he had fangs. He bared his teeth and, sadly, he did not have fangs.

"You can't tell people what you really are," I said to the Sidhe. "They will think you're nuts. If I didn't believe in you, I would think you had had plastic surgery on your ears. Trust me—people do that sort of thing these days."

"We know that but Mab's ex started the blogging fad and now we all have to contribute. Ridiculous. This is why," he said severely, "you must write the fairy tale, k-l-meri. Tales of Faerie are rare these days. We need all the help we can get."

I bit my lip. Had no one fully explained the situation to him? "Um," I said hesitantly, "the content can be... flexible, right?"

He stared.

I tried to explain in another way. "You see, the prompt was made by a—" Do the Sidhe even have a definition for the term slasher? "—person who likes a certain pairing, a pairing of, er, two humans of the same gender..."

The fey being sighed again. "Do I care that your writing focuses on a sexual fascination between two males? Hardly. Humans are discriminatory beasts. Infantile compared to us."

I somehow doubted he noticed the uncomplimentary nature of his arrogant words; and thus I doubted his 'people' were as wise as he claimed. Certainly they weren't well-mannered.

"Well good," I said, not one to debate pointlessly, "because Jim and Bones are hotties. Though I am more of a trio shipper myself—" I booted up my laptop, feeling inspired now. "—I think I can manage a decent fairy tale about two space cowboys. Minus the space thing, of course. And maybe the cowboy thing... or maybe not."

Because he hadn't interrupted my babbling like last time, I turned to look at my new supernatural writing supervisor. Upon seeing his deer-in-headlights expression, I asked apprehensively, "What?"

"Are you," and here he sounded appalled, "a Trekkie?"

"If you mean it in the non-derogatory sense, as in _Trekker_." I then beamed and answered happily, "Of course!"

He closed his eyes and seemed to slump in place. I assumed his unintelligible muttering was him laying a curse upon someone's head. I inquired politely, and nervously, as to the identity of the person with whom he was peeved.

The Sidhe opened his eyes and snapped shortly, "Stop batting your eyes. You are exempt from my wrath. For now."

I thought it best not to press the subject. Instead I said reassuringly, "We Trekkers are, in general, safe. But I bet the LOTR peeps would have a heyday with one of you!"

His voice dropped to a light strain. "We tend to stay away from Tolkien fans."

I fiddled with my laptop for a bit then my desk chair and finally my pens—which I wouldn't need but I was stalling for time. I glanced up at his ears again and imagined tweaking one of the points between my fingertips. I thought about Spock and then about Leonard doing the same thing to Spock. Hmm... I had once written a decent drabble in which Spock was King of the Fairies. If King Spock happened upon the human skeptic Leonard and Leonard's fairy-obsessed friend Jim...

The Sidhe observed my glassy stare. "_No,_" he emphasized a touch stiffly, "there are no Vulcans in Faerie."

This explained the sadly apocalyptic state of his realm. I, wise enough to keep this thought to myself, prepared to write—more resolute this time—by cracking my finger joints and posing my hands above the keyboard, every motion given its equal ceremonious due.

"Shall we begin?" I said with great cheer to my companion/watch-guard/supposedly would-be assassin if I failed.

A short yet fluid wave of his hand spoke of impatiently given permission to _get on with it._

I began to type and simultaneously quote aloud: "Once upon a time..."

"How banal," the Sidhe announced in a bored tone.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Do you want the fairy tale or not?" When he commented no further, I returned my attention to the word processor, re-read the opening line and, eventually, backspaced.

_On the frosty eve of Midwinter,_ I wrote, _a lord's wife gives birth to a child._

**[+++++]**

**The Fey Child**

On the frosty eve of Midwinter, a lord's wife gives birth to a child. The midwife swaddles the babe, which does nothing to muffle its first healthy cries of life, and places it into the arms of her assistant. She returns to the wife who is weak, like a limp poppet upon a pile of blankets, and presses a cool rag against the woman's fevered brow. She recognizes well the new mother will not last the night.

The lord, gaunt of countenance, comes to the lady's side but his face is only partly sick with grief. He clutches the pale hand of his wife and whispers in her ear. She turns her head from him and pants, the rattle of death deep in her chest, and calls for the babe instead. Her voice dwindles into stillness partway through the request.

The lord looks to the midwife and asks, voice strained, "The child?"

"Alive, m'lord," she answers.

His eyes carry the pain of a guilty man. "Bring him."

She goes to the adjoining room and is struck by a fierce anger upon discovering that the assistant, a last moment's replacement for the usual young maid who had become unexpectedly ill, had thrown open the window and abandoned the cradle to the chill of an icy night. The babe is no longer crying. She lifts him into her arms with gentleness, afraid he too may be under a black shadow of death.

Her hands pull back the swaddling—and tremble at what she finds.

The babe blinks and purses its rosebud mouth.

She stares, disbelieving, until the moment her disbelief transforms into horror. The midwife crosses herself then crosses the child and takes it to his lordship.

"A girl," he says, bemused; but only a moment passes before his bemusement blossoms into a softer wonder. He brushes at the golden fuzz crowning the child's head.

Out of fear the midwife keeps her silence. The child does not cry as the lord jostles it clumsily. He bows his head, perhaps to hide his own tears, while his bundle smacks its lips, sleepy but ready to feed.

The midwife crosses herself again and prays. What a small mercy, she thinks, that the mother has passed. The woman would have known the truth the moment she saw the babe: that this changeling is not hers.

{...}

Years pass and the child grows under the care of a doting father and obedient household.

"Jocelyn! Jocelyn, you terrible little girl, where are you?" A nursemaid wrings her hands in the middle of a house garden.

"There, Miss, mind your frettin'," intervenes a deeper voice. The gardener, a thin weathered man, rises from his crouch by a neatly trimmed hedge, brushing black dirt from his knees. "She'll turn up. A rose, that one, but a wild one ye cannot tame."

"Oh, she's a wicked thing!" moans the woman. "M'lord shall have me flogged, he shall, if I don't find her before the sun sets!"

The gardener leads the distraught woman over to a bench. "Nothin' you can do 'bout a child's curiosity, Miss."

She nibbles at her bottom lip. "I would agree were she—oh but you must understand, she's not a _normal _child," wails the nursemaid, thinking of her flyaway charge.

Hushing her quickly, the gardener cuts his eyes to the large, looming house to skim the windows for observers. "Don't say such things," he warns, removing his hands from her shoulders. "She's a young Lady 'n nothing… more."

They weigh the mutual knowledge in one another's eyes, gazes evenly matched, and let silence swallow the truth. The child belongs to the lord of the house despite rumors of her birth, and he will hear nothing ill said against her. Their loyalty lies with the lord; if he loves Jocelyn, they must love her too, for all that her strangeness frightens them.

{...}

The girl comes home before sunset just as the nursemaid is preparing to prostrate herself before her employer and beg for a swift death. The woman takes Jocelyn roughly by the arms and gives her a good shake. "Little girls mustn't run away from home! Why won't you learn?"

The girl is too surprised by this attack to reply.

A dismayed noise rises out of the nursemaid at the tangled state of the child's golden hair. "And look at you! Dirty as a boy!"

Jocelyn squirms, crying out at last, "Let go!"

"No one will ever let you go again if you keep running away!" But the woman releases her as she warns this, her anger overwhelmed by relief.

"But I'm not running away," protests the girl, stomping her foot, not nearly as afraid of the adult as a child should be. Jocelyn does not comprehend fear, the woman thinks.

"I was playing hide-and-seek—"

She gasps at this news. "With whom?" She cannot imagine the village children would be kind to a lord's daughter; indeed, that is why the lord insists on the girl's isolation, to protect her as if to shield a delicate flower. But, as the gardener said, Jocelyn is a wild rose.

The child pulls a dead leaf from her long hair and crumbles it between her fingers. "With the redbird, of course." Her eyes are gleam like polished obsidian. "He hides and I find him."

The nursemaid retrieves a hair brush to hide the nervous tick of her hands, positions the girl in front of the vanity, and begins smoothing out the knots in her charge's hair. "Everyone has imaginary friends," she says.

The girl tilts her head back, looking up at something only she can see. "The redbird is real, and he cannot lie to me."

"Friends shouldn't lie," she agrees, working on a particularly stubborn knot.

Jocelyn twists around to stare at the nursemaid. "I never said he was my friend."

The woman pauses, hairbrush aloft. "Then why would you play hide-and-seek with him?"

"Because he knows," she says mysteriously, "what I want. One day he shall give it to me."

After a moment of uneasy silence, the adult smiles with a trembling mouth and asks too brightly, "Which dress would you like to wear to dinner?"

"The new one, please!" Jocelyn abandons her tolerance for being groomed and skips away to her closet. Admiring the drape of a yellow dress in a floor-length mirror, she begins to hum one of her fanciful tunes. Then her eyes catch those of her nursemaid's and the humming stops.

"Do I look like my mother?" the child asks curiously, as she is wont to do when observing herself in a mirror.

"I am certain you do. They say she was a beautiful and kind lady."

A child needs a mother, especially a daughter. Surely this is why Jocelyn seems so strange, raised without the gentle curb of a mother's love.

"Come, Jocelyn," she beckons with an outstretched hand. "I will draw you a bath."

The dress is discarded into a shapeless puddle of gauzy material and ribbons. Jocelyn lays her head against the woman's side in such a way that, from any other child, would be a sign of affection. The nursemaid automatically strokes the girl's hair, though she is secretly repulsed by the grime under her fingertips.

Yes, it must be the missing mother.

Jocelyn pulls back slightly to ask, "Do you know there are kingdoms under the sea like there are on land?"

"I did not," she murmurs, playing along with whatever whim has sparked the child's imagination. "I suppose only mer-people can live there."

"Oh yes," the child insists, "only _special _people. The redbird says I am special like that, otherwise I couldn't talk to him." Her eyes flick to an open window as she speaks.

The nursemaid guides her charge gently in the direction of a clawfoot bathtub. "Why would anyone want to live in a cold ocean, dear?"

As the ties on the back of her ruined dress are loosened, Jocelyn dreamily singsongs, "_The Undersea is not for me; I live beneath the hill, not the sea!_"

{...}

On Jocelyn's sixteenth birthday and the day she meets her betrothed, the son of lord from a different stretch of countryside (where summer is long, quite the opposite of their winterland), the young couple disappears on a carriage ride extended too late into the day, much to their fathers' combined amusement and the boy's mother's horror.

The next morning only Jocelyn returns to greet her father and her betrothed's parents.

"Where is my son?" cries the distraught mother, clutching first at her expensive fox-fur shawl then at her husband, whose face goes from white to rose.

The lord gently ushers his daughter aside and asks, "Princess, where has that young Clayton gone? Do not be afraid to tell your poor papa."

Jocelyn ghosts his dry cheek with her fingertips. "I could never fear you, Father," she laughs.

"What of Clayton?"

Her elegant shoulders rise and fall carelessly. "He wished to prove his love to me, so I merely obliged him and sent him on a quest."

For a long moment, her father is shocked into silence. When finally able to manage words, he wants to know, "What sort of quest, Jocelyn?"

She smiles her secret smile, lovely but terrifying, and again shrugs. "To fetch only a trifle, Father. A crown of oak and hawthorn."

"But why would you desire a crown made of brambles? I could have one commissioned of the rarest jewels!"

"Why do I need a husband?" his daughter counters, then steps back and smoothes the wrinkles from yesterday's dress. "If Clayton returns with what I ask, he shall have me. If he does not, then I will not be unhappy." She nods graciously to Clayton's parents and retreats from the room, softly singing a ditty of a prince she once knew, stolen by fairies.

* * *

><p><strong>The Tailor and the Maiden<strong>

Leonard is a broad-shouldered man of twenty with a brooding brow and dark, unruly hair. The brooding is a condition from assuming too much responsibility at an early age, his mother says, and his untameable hair is a legacy from his father's family, passed from father to son for generations. In addition to her claimed expertise in genealogy, his mother is also an experienced herbalist while he, Leonard, trains to become a tailor like his father, who died some winters ago from an ague no one could cure. Currently Leonard is on a mission to spy upon the village apothecary, an herbalist's sworn enemy (his mother's words, not the apothecary's, who is a sweet, aged man of seventy) when he first notices _her_.

She is beautiful to the eyes, yes, but there something else about the girl which strikes him as… different. Perhaps it is the dreamy drift of her fingertips over a skein of weaver's gold thread; perhaps it is the unusual luminosity of her hair, or the graceful way she carries herself from one market stall to the next.

But she is different, he can see that.

Then he notices the richness of her attire and the hovering guard at her shoulder, and his hopes wither before they can even begin to bud. The young woman must be a visiting noble, not a commoner such as he.

Leonard is, if anything, a sensible person; but as he turns to leave the cobbled street, certain introducing himself would only be foolish, she looks his way and captures him.

Where her hair is bright, her eyes are incongruously dark. Yet there is a power in them that makes his heart's rhythm fly and his mind forget every logical reason not to associate above his class. Then her gaze moves past him, releasing him, and Leonard resurfaces to the world, gasping for a forgotten breath.

Who is she?

Someone shoves at his shoulder, complaining about his rooted feet. "Quit yer dallyin', lunk-head! Some of us got places to be!" bellows the man leading a wooden cart of a dozen caged and squawking chickens. By the time the irate man wheels his wares pass Leonard, the girl and her guard have vanished.

He spends the next fortnight moping about his place of work (he gets yelled at for sewing a jacket's sleeves closed, which turned into a rather hilarious spectacle, in his opinion, when the jacket's owner struggled to shove his arms through nonexistent holes) then moping about his home until his mother tosses him out of her makeshift shop for breaking a pot of rosemary.

"This is what unrequited love does, you silly child," she tells him, shaking a shard of the shattered clay pot. "It makes you useless! So stop fooling about and go do what young men do."

He rolls his eyes at her exasperated huffing. "I thought mothers were supposed to warn their sons _not _to be idiots."

She turns back to her plants, saying, "If you don't play the idiot once and a while, I might never have grandchildren."

His mother frightens him more often than not; but her tacit permission sends him running back to the marketplace to ask after the name of a dark-eyed, golden-haired beauty.

{...}

The mysterious woman _is _a noble, he learns, and her name is Jocelyn. Jocelyn the Fair, a simpering lady selling handmade jewelry tells him. Buy her a trinket and she'll adore you! Jocelyn the Fey, says another. When Leonard asks the old woman selling apples what that means, she smiles crookedly at him. "You don't want that one, boy" is her warning. "The fey only bewitch. To love is against nature for Fair Folk."

After polishing a red apple with a rag, she offers it free of charge. He runs his thumb over its shining surface and lifts it to his mouth to take a bite. Only then does he notice the small hole and returns the apple to the old woman. "It has a worm."

She laughs. "Hard to see for all the pretty though, isn't it?"

Her laughter seems to follow him home but his mind is too preoccupied with a name to care.

_Jocelyn the Fair._

He waits by the weaver's stall with a handful of fresh flowers for Jocelyn every third market day until she reappears. Under the glare of the young woman's guard, he awkwardly introduces himself then shoves the bouquet of flowers into her startled hands. The woman looks it for a long time before slowly plucking a single yellow flower to twirl between her fingertips. The remainder of the bouquet is handed to the guard.

His heart sinks. "I'm sorry," he apologizes, feeling awful. "You don't like them."

She meets Leonard's eyes and gives him the same thoughtful consideration as the flowers. "Where do flowers grow in winter?"

He frowns, taken aback by the riddle. "I guess… inside?"

Her laughter is nothing like the old woman's; it is rich with lovely things Leonard cannot name, for he is inept at poetry just as he is inept at most things, like riding a horse or sword-fighting.

Jocelyn asks before turning away, "Why should a flower be tamed when it is meant to be wild?"

His shoulders slump under the rejection.

But then she adds very softly, as if for his ears alone, "I like wild roses best."

The trouble he goes to to find a wild rose in a semi-permanent winter land makes his ears burn with embarrassment; yet when next he meets Jocelyn, one of his scratched hands offers her a single red rose which, amazingly, looks as fresh as the day he first plucked it. Perhaps this is so because of its intended romantic purpose. He smiles at the silly thought.

Jocelyn accepts the rose expressionlessly but the gleam of her eyes speaks of her pleasure, and his heart thumps hard in his chest. Ignoring the baleful glower of guard at her back, Jocelyn half-whispers, "Will you show me where you found it?"

"The place is a ways out," he mutters, nervous but thrilled by the request. "In the woodlands close to the hills."

"Then, tomorrow at dawn, I will meet you by the lower gate and you will take me there."

He nods, thinking he would wait at the lower gate from now until the rise of the sun if it meant he would see her again.

{...}

She comes alone, sneaking through the town both cloaked and wrapped in shadows. Together, they slip beyond the lower gate and into the wilderness. To his chagrin, Leonard is disoriented more than once as they move into a copse of tall pines. But Jocelyn, hood thrown back to reveal the shining gold of her hair, seems to know well the path they are upon.

He describes the clearing where he discovered the solitary rose bush. She responds, "It would grow alone; it marks a border no mortal eye can see."

"What sort of border?" he asks, curious.

Jocelyn's blue-black eyes dance at him; her hand takes his, tugging him farther under the dark, hushed canopy of trees. Soon the crisp, cold air turns cloying, like heavy perfume heated by summer sun. Roseheads bob in greeting as they enter the clearing.

"I recognize this place," Jocelyn remarks almost idly. "I used to play here as a child with—a friend."

Hearing the sudden longing in her voice and afraid of what remains unspoken, he asks, "What happened to your friend?"

"Hmmm?" She looks at Leonard, brushing a few loose strands of her golden hair from her face. "He is here, I imagine, but I fear he and I cannot meet as we once did. Father does not approve." Her mouth twists to something close to sardonic. "You have witnessed my second shadow."

The guard? Yes. Leonard mumbles, "I'm sorry."

Her attention has already moved elsewhere. Kneeling by the rose bush, the young woman touches first a soft red petal of an open bloom then, below it, a thorn. She whispers a few words in a lilting language, rises again, and lifts her head as if seeking something.

The hem of Jocelyn's cloak carves a faint trail into the snow as she walks the wide circle of the area. He senses anticipation from her but cannot identify the reason behind it. What is there is to find in a forest but trees, small animals and, however bizarre, summer-ripened roses?

Without warning, his companion begins to openly beg: "Please! Please, I am here! Show me where!" Leonard is struck by the raw desperation in her voice.

"Why must you hide from me?" Her begging dwindles as she returns to the patch of wild roses bobbing in a nonexistent wind. She remains, head bowed, facing them for some time until Leonard realizes, surprised, she is crying soundless tears.

Uncertain, the young man offers her an embrace.

"The path is not here," she whispers against the rough fabric of his cloaked shoulder. "I'm old enough now so why can I not find it?" Then, pulling back, she adds abrupty, "I must go" and wipes her wet face with the back of her hand. "If Father discovers I am not abed, I will lose what little freedom I have." Her voice turns into a sigh.

He returns with her to the town's lower gate, miserable as she, and expects this is an end their short acquaintance. Yet Jocelyn gives him her thanks and asks softly of him, "Will I see you again?"

The "Yes!" bursts from him. Leonard tempers his enthusiasm with a milder, "Only if you don't mind."

She nods somewhat absently, drawing the hood of her cloak to hide her face, and disappears into the daylight of early morning.

{...}

They make a routine of meeting in the marketplace. Leonard is too shy to hold her hand or say silly endearments, so he settles for enjoying her quiet companionship as they transverse the thoroughfare of buyers and sellers. Then one day, instead of walking at his side, she grabs his hand and pulls him into a empty doorway and, before he can ask what happened to her ever-present guard, kisses him.

"I don't know what to do," she whispers against his mouth. "What must I do? They say I am unfeeling but—imagine drowning in a lake, so close to the surface you can see the sun in the sky but unable to break through..." She lifts his hand to her cold cheek.

"How can I help?" he implores.

She kisses him again, more slowly this time. "I want to feel something other than this drowning."

He is lost to Jocelyn in that moment.

Leonard's infatuation grows into love. On a late afternoon of one of their trysts, he holds her in his arms while the last lazy rays of sun coil through the window of their rented room and paints their naked bodies in streaks of orange. Softly whispering, he tells her of how he feels and kisses her forehead, her cheek, her mouth.

Jocelyn remains slack in his arms, head turned and the look of dreaming in her open eyes. Is she picturing their future? he wonders.

At last a soft sigh stirs the silence. "Leonard," Jocelyn murmurs, as though he is far away. "If I could, I would love you."

He is too young and too human to understand her meaning. He thinks she is saying in her own way his worst fear: that she cannot marry him because she, as a lord's daughter, must have a husband with wealth and standing. He will be nothing more than a simple tailor, earning enough to live but not enough for luxury. Leonard buries his face against her golden hair and promises, unable to imagine a world without her, "I won't let you go."

He visits her father, burning with both determination and fear, prepared to plead for Jocelyn; but the lord is surprised enough to say, "My girl loves you?"

"We love each other," he explains. "Please, sir, doesn't your daughter's happiness matter?"

"Her happiness is all that matters. You say she… loves you?" repeats Jocelyn's father, staring at him in faint surprise.

His temper flares. "Is that hard to believe," he dares, "because I am not rich? Jocelyn isn't petty."

"You misunderstand," Leonard is told. "I only meant—oh, never mind, young man. If you swear to protect her always, to cherish her as I do, I see no reason to deny your proposal of marriage. I learned long ago that Jocelyn must have what she wants."

"Except her freedom," Leonard says, thinking of the guard.

The man before him inexplicably ages, lifts a helpless, weary hand. "I have done what I can for my daughter. The matter of her freedom will soon be yours to decide. On this, only your heart can counsel you."

My heart loves her, he thinks. How could she not be free with me?

He is too happy, imagining a wonderful life with Jocelyn, to notice the pity in her father's eyes.

* * *

><p><strong>The Beast<strong>

To the eyes of the world, he is a beast. He has four limbs; claws for digging snow or scraping bark; and sharp, strong teeth for tearing the flesh of a meal. He has fur to keep warm from winter's chill and a tail to aid in the balance of climbing of an icy rock or the creaking limb of a tall tree. Yet despite what he seems to be, the beast is not comfortable in his beast skin.

For his heart is not a beast's. This he learns because _she _tells him what he really is.

{...}

Rested after a fresh night hunt, the beast is occupied with cleaning the matted fur over his paws when someone summons him. He is young and unafraid and quite curious because no one has summoned him before.

The summoner is tall and thin with the long raven's hair and darker eyes still. Moonlight is both the lacework of her gown and the net of fire twining through her hair. The beast slinks easily to her feet and lays there.

"Do you know what you are?" Her language is fluid, like words shaping out of the stream. He can understand her.

He answers, "I am a beast. What are you?"

She kneels to run her fingers through the thick fur on his flank and he rolls onto his side in pleasure.

"I am the reason you are a beast," she tells him.

"Do you make all beasts?"

"No, only you." She rises again and lifts her hands into the air, seeming to capture it in spirals of color. "It is your eighth year. Once every eighth year, you are free to be what you truly are."

The colors spread out and envelop him as her magic settles into his skin, working its way deep into his bones. He does not understand what the magic is doing until he is naked upon the snow, inside a new body. Upon inspection, he discovers many interesting things about himself: his legs are too short in the front to compensate for the extra length of his legs in the back; most of his fur is gone as are his claws; and his nose ends in a tiny blunt tip.

"Stand as I stand" he is told. He rises awkwardly on two legs, only to next discover the heavy bulk of his body is greatly diminished. Yet for all this new strangeness, he still feels young and free. His face is tilted until he looks up rather than continues to inspect the clawless toes of his feet.

"Listen well. You shall live as a human until the moon grows full again. Then you must return to a beast."

He touches the smooth skin of his face, the round edges of his ears, his small nose. "Can I always be a human?" he wants to know, because this body could be better than a beast's. Beasts are strong and fast, yes, but also solitary. Humans, mostly, are not.

Her words, like her magic, are saturated with power. "There is a way. If you tell me your true name, you shall never become a beast again."

She leaves him then, disappearing almost instantly, but he is not interested in her departure. He plucks frozen red berries from a nearby bush and rolls them between his hands; when he puts one of them in his mouth, it has a horridly bitter taste.

Everything is new, and he delights in the investigation of it all. Once he has re-explored his wooded territory, his thoughts inevitably turn to others of his kind and their strange big dens. As a beast, he enjoys running amidst huddles of their noisy sheep; but when dogs start their frenzied barking he generally has to abandon his play. Being a human and no longer a beast, he now imagines he can run among them freely.

This is when he discovers a disadvantage of being not-a-beast. His nose is too small and silly to help him trace the path to a human settlement. It is beginning to burn instead, as his fingers burned when he stuck them through a patch of ice. His furless body, it seems, no longer feels the warmth of the stranger's magic. He whines in his throat and looks back at the way he had come but a light snowfall has already hidden the imprints of his feet. Suddenly he wants his den, or any den, deciding he can find humans once he is warmer. But there is no choice except to keep moving.

When he finally breaks away from a thick copse of trees and into a wide field, he feels sluggish with exhaustion and cold. Collapsing into a groove of wet dirt and snow at the edge of the field, he tucks his legs up to his body.

Forever seems to pass; a bird calls out from in its journey. A hard-shelled beetle inspects the tip of one of his fingers before scuttling on about its business. When he is too weak to keep his eyes open, a new sound comes—the crunching of snow under heavy footfalls. He stays limp as strong arms bear him up from his icy bed and shelter his naked body in something rough but warm. It is longer still until he can open his eyes again; when he does, it is to look upon the face of a female human stroking his head and urging him to drink. He thinks he stays shaking and fevered for a long time but she is always there, a soothing presence, each time he wakes up.

She and a man (her husband, the farmer who found him in the field) ask him questions he cannot answer. He simply does not know how to answer them. So they teach him words.

One night the woman says to him, "You are a miracle, boy" as she tucks him into a small bed. She touches her belly, then his face with a new expression, crying but not sad. She tells him he is her miracle, a child brought back from death as none of her children ever were. He knows not what she speaks of, or comprehends it, or really cares.

A human is happiness, he decides, as he learns to run and jump on two legs and use his hands for things like picking snapbeans or putting on clothes (which he isn't fond of doing at first, not until he realizes clothes equal warmth). The woman is affectionate; the man less so, but not unkind. If the woman is happy, he hears them talking to one another late at night, then so is her husband.

No one tells him happiness cannot last forever. He forgets what he is beneath the skin until on a cold, clear night he is awoken by a strange dream. In the dream, a Queen crowned with midnight roses speaks to him. "Beast," she calls. "Where are you?"

He awakens and quietly pads to a frost-covered window. The moon is high and full; in the distance, past the farmer's barren field, colors of blues, greens, and purples form a beacon over a line of trees. Not intending to be gone long, he takes the coat the woman made for him and sneaks outside as they sleep.

She is there, the Queen from his dream who summoned him; if she is a queen, he thinks, she must be the Queen of Winter, who keeps moonlight fire in her hair and is snow-pale with eyes of black ice.

"Hello," he says as humans do, and shuffles closer to look at the illusion of dancing colors she has cast upon the snow.

"What is your name?" the Winter Queen asks.

"My name is Boy," he replies proudly.

She glides close enough to press a hand upon the crown of his head. "You are a boy. The boy with the light of the sun trapped in his hair. But that is not your name."

The illusion rises up into spires and ensnares him, binding his body back into its former, sleeker shape. With a fierce toss of his furry head, he protests being a beast again in a long howl. But the Winter Queen is fading, and he belatedly springs after her, sprawling into a bank of loose snow.

This is not what he wants! He will find the Winter Queen and tell her this.

He lifts his long nose, senses sharpened again, to catch the scent of her fey magic but there is only a bitter aftertaste. He is the beast, and alone.

He is afraid to leave the human couple who want him as family and spends several days lurking about the border of the farm. The man and woman search for the boy he was and sometimes he answers their cries with a mournful cry of his own. However his beast's voice scares them, he soon realizes, so he stops crying. Their search for him grows disheartened until the day comes they quit searching altogether; the man tells his wife about finding a torn coat and animal tracks in the snow; they believe he is dead, eaten by a monster.

The boy is the monster but they could not know this, and he cannot tell them what he is. Eventually he realizes he must leave them behind to survive, this man and woman (father and mother) who are willing to love him, and retreats to the hills to resume his life as a beast.

{...}

Time moves on; winter is ever-present, whether it is lurking quietly during the short season of sprouting green, warm sun, and slow-melting river ice, or claiming the land for its own in blankets of sleet and snow. Winter is a way of life all things adapt to.

He wakes curled up in the hollow serving as his current den, human again for the third time. Crawling into the open, he startles a white hare and watches it dive into a patch of bracken, red eyes rolling in fright. Then he stands up, shades his eyes from the glare of sun upon snow, and starts walking. At one point he finds a puddle of half-frozen water and admires his angular face and sun-colored hair.

A doe eyes him warily from between two trees; it leaps away when he charges it, and he winds up face down in leaves and mud. He knows pride is his enemy, for he cannot accept this form is so clumsy and terrible at hunting. With a grimace, he decided he isn't hungry anyway and, ignoring the bite of fresh snow on his skin, cleans the mud from his face before resuming his journey.

Find shelter. Find clothes.

Find humans.

It goes without saying _find his name_.

Last time he had tried to skirt the deal with the Winter Queen, hoping her magic could not reach in him in a human settlement; but he learned then nothing can prevent him from returning to a beast except the power of a name. This experience was traumatic, not for him but for the girl who had woken up to find a beast in her bed instead of her lover. The men of the village hunted him for days after that, and he had to run far, far away. Janice had claimed to love him, but who is going to love a beast?

Love is strange. He knows now he does not miss Janice or the tavern and its gruff owner Old Bill out of love, but he misses companionship and human touch. Sometimes he misses Bill's roar in the early morning made to rouse him from his pallet of rags by the kitchen stove; he definitely misses the smell of baking meat pies; and more so, the tart taste of green apples and honey.

Memories come back to him, sharp and clear, now that his beast skin is gone. Would Bill and Janice remember the long-limbed, mysterious boy-turning-man from eight years past? Would they recognize him now that he is fully grown?

He learned much and has forgotten none of it: from Bill, how to read some words and when to curse; from Janice, when curiosity is good and when it isn't, and how to love; from a mean-spirited Frank, that some people will hurt you if they can, even when you are not hurting them.

But he never learned his name. And words like "goose-headed fool", "handsome", and "son" would never break the Winter Queen's spell.

This time he has to find what he needs.

{...}

There is a town to the west but he is trying to remember if any humans live farther out than the town, some place where he can beg for or steal what a human must have before he moves on. Hence he is not quite wondering aimlessly, lost in thought, when another human makes an unexpected appearance.

"Hello." She is small, young, and watching him curiously. Her hair is only a shade darker than his own.

"Hello," he repeats.

The girl clasps her hands in front of her and asks, "Aren't you cold?"

"Cold?" he echoes.

"You don't have any clothes. I'd be cold if I didn't have any clothes."

He thinks for a moment, lifts up one bare arm for inspection then the opposite arm. "I have lost my fur," he explains.

She cocks her head. "Where did you leave it?"

He does not know that answer. "It... goes away, sometimes."

"Oh."

He stands very still under her frank stare, wondering if she is going to run from him or laugh or fling snow at his furless body as others have in the past. When the girl turns, he decides she is simply going to leave. She marches some steps away but then stops and tells him, "You're supposed to follow me."

Most humans become angry when he follows them.

"C'mon!" insists the girl. She points through a copse of trees. "I can get you my Papa's clothes to wear. He's a tailor so he can always make more."

"But," he half-questions, "I am a—" What is the word? "—stranger." This is a bad thing to be, he knows.

"You're somebody who's lost his fur," she replies. "You need more fur until the old fur comes back."

He is not cold yet but she does not know that. The child is inviting him to follow her, and because she is unafraid of him, he does.

She chirps conversationally, "My name's Joanna. What's yours?"

"I do not know my name." _I am looking for it._

"Oh," she says, checking over her shoulder to make certain he is still trailing at her heels. "Did you lose that too, like your fur?"

He shakes his head.

"Then it might be harder to find," she warns him wisely.

Yes, he knows.

**[+++++]**

As I closed down the word processor window, bleary-eyed and tired from a long stretch of writing, the Sidhe demanded, "Is it done?"

"For tonight," I said. "It's past one in the morning and tomorrow—_today_—" I corrected myself, sighing deeply, "—is Monday." How often would I have to remind him that my schedule accommodates _him_, not the other way around?

For the first three paragraphs, he had stood over my shoulder reading as I wrote. Suffice to say, that did not last long. I had told him to quit because his constant scrutiny was making me nervous. So he had chosen the only chair in my bedroom in which to sulk.

I turned to my house guest and admired the languid drape of his limbs. Alas, I did not imagine he had any intention of remaining that way for the duration of however long it took to write a fairy tale about Jim and Bones. "Will you be leaving now?" I asked politely.

His light-colored eyes were considering. "You will continue to write." It wasn't a question.

"I'll try" was my mild reply. "Though your presence is most helpful!" I had begun to equate the Sidhe to my muse manifested.

I saw him recoil though his body did not alter its position, and I wondered if he had an ability to read minds. The Sidhe then sprang away from the chair, so quick a movement I barely saw it. Pausing briefly by my open bedroom door, he said, "I will return once each week until the tale is completed." Then he was gone.

I sunk into my own chair, feeling depleted. A burbling noise arose from my stomach.

Funny, I had forgotten to eat. In fact, the world seemed to have fallen away while I was writing and the Sidhe was here. Only after he left did I recall things like hunger and cold and time. Was this a symptom of being in the presence of a fey being? Had he somehow muffled my senses to all but a single-minded focus to write?

If so, the Sidhe had the beginnings of an extremely profitable business. All he need do was rent himself out as a writer's good luck charm. I snickered at the thought, reached up to my desk lamp, and clicked it off. But as I climbed into bed, reality crowded in with me. I groaned into my pillow.

Work in seven hours. Oh God.

He should have stayed, I thought in despair, because I'll never get that fairy tale done without him!


	3. Part II

Part II

The next Sunday the Sidhe came back. When he realized I had done non-Faerie-related things all week and not a jot of writing, he had a fit. A conniption fit, as my grandmother would have said, complete with bulging eyes and unmanly shrieks.

I nibbled on a gingersnap while he leapt and pranced and generally flew about the kitchen spouting a guttural Faerie language I did not understand.

"_You_," he said with a long finger pointed at me, "are a disgraceful—"

"Hey," I interrupted, disgusted and wiping at my arm, "watch it. You're spitting on me."

And to think, it had taken me three days to convince myself I imagined the whole Faerie-has-contracted-me-to-write-a-short-story-YAY! thing. Then the Sidhe reappeared out of a shadow, and I jumped onto the crazy-bandwagon again. (Because let's face it, people—if I wrote all of this down and you happened upon it and read it, you would _never _believe a single word was true.)

"You will complete the tale by midnight," he was demanding. "You will write until your fingers are as knobbly as Rumplestiltskein's!"

I wanted to ask if Rumplestiltskein was an actual member of Faerie—and, if so, why did his parents gift him with such a horrible misnomer?—but the thought led me to a better idea. "I'm going to name you," I declared.

He stopped ranting and looked indignant. "I am not a pet."

"Well," I said sweetly, knowing how this would go if rumors are to be believed, "there is another option... You could tell me your _real _name." When he said nothing, I cried, "Excellent! I dub thee Spock!"

The Sidhe did not appreciate my choice.

"Tsk, tsk, Spock. The tips of your pretty pointed ears are turning green with temper."

His hand halted mid-air on its way to cover one of his ears. "My blood is _not _green."

Oh ho, somebody here watches Star Trek besides me, I thought.

A flush started up his neck, bringing more color into his otherwise pasty-pale skin.

"I won't tell," I mock-whispered, and said more formally, "Shall we get to business then, Mr. Spock?"

This time it was I, writer klmeri, who led the way to the bedroom. The Sidhe followed.

**[+++++]**

**The Invisible Prince**

He pulls curiously at the loose fabric over his arms and shoulders and leans in to smell it, his nose twitching at the mixed scent of sweat and something like cider served at a tavern…

"It's clean!" interrupts the girl named Joanna.

He looks at the small honey-haired child. Since she is frowning, he frowns too. "Who cleans it?" he asks, recalling belatedly that clothes are human fur, in a sense, and are kept free of dirt, fleas, and the like.

She plucks the bunched bit of shirt from between his fingertips. "I do," Joanna says somewhat haughtily, as if he is questioning her ability to wash clothes. "'N don't scrunch up your nose like that. My Papa's got a nice smell."

He never said it wasn't a nice smell.

Her frown deepens as she observes him, beginning from the top of his head down to his feet. Her gaze lingers at his feet; he looks at them too, wiggling his toes against the wooden floor of the cottage.

"I gave you some socks," the girl child remarks in exasperation. "Why aren't you wearin' socks? Don't you know you can catch a chill without them? That's what my Papa says."

He shakes his head. He doesn't like anything on his feet. Why do humans always want their feet covered? Are they as embarrassed about feet as they are about other body parts they have? Sometimes he thinks living as a beast is simpler, at least in the sense that a beast does not need to hide what he has.

Joanna finds one of the socks beneath a table (where he had hidden it) and waves it in his direction with an imperious "Put it on!"

He retreats onto a bench against a wall and tucks his bare feet under his body. She calls him stubborn. Old Bill called him stubborn when, after three days of the grimiest chores in the tavern, he was still scrubbing away at ten years' worth of hardened ash on the hearthstone, mute as ever, but unwilling to give up the only work offered to him. _Stubbornest, strangest fella, _Bill had said, to come begging to the tavern's kitchen door. Yet the tavern-keeper was fair and let him stay since it was obvious he could be a kitchen-hand, if a clumsy one.

He snarls at her (lightly so as not to frighten her) what he snarled Bill each time the man complained about his behavior: "Not stubborn!"

She gives him a look he hasn't seen before and says, dropping the sock back to the floor, "You're more of a child than I am."

She does look like an adult, he thinks, with that severe slant to her eyebrows and her lips pressed so primly.

Joanna takes it upon herself to provide entertainment for her new friend. She leads him around the main room of the cottage, pointing out the interesting things like the herb bundles hanging over the window sill and the current storybook her father is reading to her at nighttime and the jar in the cupboard the mice frequent because it contains a mixture of seeds and stale bread crumbs Joanna likes to feed her favorite winter wren. She shows him the loft she pretends is her tower when she plays Rapunzel and her favorite yellow hair ribbon. Together, the pair poke their curious noses into every corner of the house, save one room.

The room belongs to her parents. He isn't allowed in there unless invited and even she, the daughter, is subject to this rule, especially in the hours before dawn (unless it is just her Papa inside, but he doesn't understand what she means by that). Joanna's clever eyes fix on him as she says this, and he returns her stare with a blank one of his own.

"You don't say much," he is told.

He opens and closes his mouth like a gasping fish before blurting out, "I ask too many questions."

"But you've asked none."

Yes, because he will ask too many. He learned on his own too many questions earn him less answers. He has to wait until he has a good question—an _important _question—that cannot go unanswered.

Like, "What is my name?"

Joanna would not know, so he doesn't ask.

At the rattle of a latch, the child bounds away their mess of an up-ended cupboard and nearly tips over a stool in her enthusiasm to get to the cottage door. "Papa's home!"

Hearing this, he hurries back to the bench and fits himself onto it, throwing his arms around his knees.

A voice says not unkindly, "Careful now, sweetheart. Papa's not as young as he used to be." The edge of the door shields Joanna and her Papa from sight but, listening, he likes the timbre of the man's voice. Then the door is closed to reveal someone who is the complete opposite of Joanna—tanned as she is pale and richly dark-haired rather than fair. The man does not look like her sire until, that is, his features arrange into something very similarly unhappy to Joanna's expression when he refused to put on the sock.

"Who's this?" the man wants to know in a sharper tone.

Joanna slips from under the protective clutch of her father's hand. "I found 'im, Papa!"

The man could brand him with the green blaze of those eyes.

He says, not fearful but rather awed, for lack of exceptional conversational skills, "Hello."

Joanna's Papa grunts in return, a clear unfriendliness pinching at the corners of his eyes. Then the broad-shouldered man carefully studies the innocent expression of his child. "Jo, it's one thing to bring home pets but this—" Here he narrows his gaze at the stranger seated guilelessly in his home. "—is a man. What'd I tell you about—"

"But he was naked," interrupts the little girl, not wanting to be fussed at, "'n it was _snowing._"

'Papa', like a bear, rumbles deep in his chest and shields his cub.

Tensing, he instinctively recognizes the look in the man's eyes as _danger abound_.

"He was what?" Joanna's father repeats menacingly. The rumble becomes a growl directed at the interloper, "You keep over there where I can see you. Damn it, Jo, stay behind me!"

"But, Papa!" The girl tugs on her father's hand. "He ain't harmful, I swear. Remember, I told you about the—"

"Enough!" snaps the man. Then, casting those fierce eyes about the room, he adds in growing alarm, "Where's your mother?"

Joanna crosses her arms in a sulk behind her beloved Papa. "Mamma's gone again. I tried waiting but you was taking too long to come home so I went to find her but found Sockless instead."

The room throbs with a heartbeat of silence.

"Sockless?" her father mutters, the edge of threat receding from his voice.

_Sockless? _He is wondering the same thing but has sense enough not to echo the question, not while Papa still looks faintly like he wants a good reason to chase him back into the woods. The cottage isn't as expansive as a tavern but it is nicely arranged for its size.

And the tips of his fingers and nose are warm again.

Joanna points at an accusatory finger in his direction. "He won't wear socks 'n when I tried to tell him he had to, he sat on his feet!" She turns an aggrieved look on her father. "Now he's gonna catch a sickness and die a'fore I can train him."

The man stares at his daughter for a long moment before replying slowly, "Joanna, a man is not a pet—even a… brain-addled one." Now the man addresses him. "You should leave, mister. We aren't looking for trouble and since my daughter doesn't seem upset because of you, I'll take that as a sign you've done her no harm. Meaning I won't tell the village warden you're around. But," his eyes remain hard, "we don't take in strays."

He doesn't understand everything the man is saying but he recognizes its tone of rejection easily enough. He has heard that rejection many times in the past; most people aren't as charitable to an awkward adolescent as they might be to a small child; he imagines they would be even less so to a full-grown man.

He wills his frozen muscles to loosen sufficiently so he can slink with caution along the wall to the door and slip from the cottage. Joanna's father's eyes track him beyond the door. When he reaches the invisible boundary between cottage and wilderness, he is stopped short by an exclamation of "_Mamma!_" Joanna's cry echoes like the excited shrill of a bird.

With long-honed instincts, he pauses to lift his face to a cold wind and breathes in. A scent of bitter but familiar magic freezes his lungs.

"Joanna!" comes a second shout, but the child pays no heed to the frightened call of her father.

He moves to interrupt Joanna's flight past him, equally afraid the Winter Queen is nearby and Joanna may run headlong into her. Just barely recalling her father's warning to stay away, he looks apprehensively over his shoulder at the dark-haired man instead of chasing the child. However, the man does not spare him a glance as in his sprint after his daughter down the snow-and-mud packed lane.

He licks his lips, uncertain, then lopes after them. He isn't supposed to follow, undoubtedly should not to preserve himself, but he imagines a father without his child and a child without her father; apprehension and a tiny flare of guilt urges him on. Slowing from a trot, he comes abreast of a tree whose branches are bent miserably under hoarfrost and lingers there, watching the scene unfold ahead of him.

Joanna kneels beside a woman in a snow drift, shaking limp hands in her own, until the father orders the girl to move back so he can cup the woman's face and say something to her. At the slow droop of the woman's head and shoulders, the man sheds a dark brown cloak and tucks it around her body.

He can hear Joanna asking excitedly "Did you find it, Mamma?" over her father's insistence that she be quiet. The woman seems to wilt further.

"But the redbird on the bough told me where to go! That's what he told me!"

Her Papa cuts into her wail with "Jo! Go in the house!"

For the second time Joanna takes flight, heedless of anyone in her path, tears on her flushed cheeks and an angry downturn to her mouth. Her feet stumble once but she shoves away his attempt to catch her and cries, "Let me alone! I won't help you find your name!"

Had she struck him he would have been less surprised. He backs up to the trunk of the tree, ignoring the roots scratching painfully against the still tender flesh of his feet.

Somewhere beyond his shelter a world-weary voice repeats "Jocelyn?"

The acrid taste of magic grows until it is pervading, burning in his nostrils and at the back of his throat. The woman, standing on her own now, is less than two arms' length away from him. She sheds crumpled leaves from the ribbons of her muddy dress like a dying tree; and her hair, similar to his, is a burnished gold coin. It is the woman's eyes, however, which catch him fast, twin pools of a winter-dark river, too deep, too _seeing_.

"_Jocelyn._" The man takes the woman's thin shoulders in his hands, protective again, and urges her away. "Let's go."

Her "Hello" is neither weak nor tentative; it is as strong as the sudden, demanding rise of her arm, fingers outstretched to touch him. He stares at those long, elegant fingers, seeing not the ring of silver on one finger or the dirt under the nails; he sees another hand, also finely boned and elegant, running its moonlight-pale fingers through fur.

She makes a small protest when he jerks back, slipping and sliding over a large root to his knees.

"What are you?" she asks at the same time Joanna's father insists, "Jocelyn, leave him be."

She tilts her head back to look at the man. "Is he a guest?"

"He… was a guest of your daughter's."

Those eyes return to him.

Joanna's father asks in low plea, "C'mon, Jocelyn, he is no one. Let's go home."

"I thought I was lost," the woman says, eerily serene. "I thought the redbird had lied to me again, to keep me suffering, and I called and called— Oh, Leonard," she murmurs, "I have despaired I would never find it." She leans into her husband for a brief moment. "Invite him in."

Leonard recoils without visibly moving away from her but his voice already sounds of defeat. "Jocelyn, we don't know him."

"I know the beast in his eyes," she says and abandons them to glide down the cottage lane like a graceful wrath in a tattered gown.

He doesn't dare move under the hard gaze pinning him to the tree.

"Beast, huh?" says the husband. "Well, keep your beastly nature to yourself." Those eyes rake over him then seem to realize he is already trembling and bare. The man, though gruff, seems less hostile when he adds, "You may be scrawny but cowering doesn't suit you. Get up, then, and come in." His voice drops to a mutter as he strides away. "Likes his toes in the snow. _Only an idiot._"

He stays where he is until the sun drops below the horizon and his breath is close to crystallizing in the air. He doesn't run from the cottage because he isn't willing to give up a chance to be human; but he doesn't leave his huddle against the tree, either, unable to tell a lie from a truth and welcome from pity. It isn't until the door to the cottage opens and Joanna leans out, lantern in hand, to call him—_Sockless! _of all things—like her pet to-be-trained that he crawls from the roots and decides he might as well spend a night on a warm floor if given a choice.

{...}

During that first night sheltered in the cottage, he stirs awake from a fitful sleep to find the mother, Jocelyn, leaning over him. She glows in the darkness of the cottage's loft.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I am looking at a beast that is a man," she replies. "How did you change?"

He drags the coverlet over his exposed chest, wondering how long she has been watching him in the dark. He doesn't answer her question.

Jocelyn grabs at his face, her sharp nails cutting a pattern of half-moons into the skin of his jaw. The bitter magic comes rushing back and chokes out the regular air from his lungs. He makes a noise, an urgent _let me go!_, and when she does not, he howls in his throat and thrusts her away. They lock stares, the woman on her knees and him in a defensive huddle, until a light flickers to life below the loft.

"Mamma?" a sleepy voice calls.

Jocelyn shudders and presses her hands to her chest, twisting the cloth of her white gown between her hands. The wild taste about her melts into a kind of pain. "Please," she begs, "tell me!"

There is a thump as Joanna's lantern hits the bottom rung of the ladder. "Mamma?" the child whispers again, sounding uncertain.

He does nothing, can do nothing but stay squatted over his straw bed, waiting to see if he needs to fight or flee. At last, Jocelyn moves toward the ladder and climbs down. He can hear their voices without peering over the edge of the loft.

Joanna is saying, "It's all right, Mamma, but you can't wander at night, remember?"

Jocelyn murmurs something.

"It's only Sockless up there 'n you shouldn't spook him," whispers the child insistently.

"He's a beast," Joanna's mother whispers back.

"I know," says the girl, "that's why I brought him home. But he can't help you until we help him first."

{...}

The morning meal is uneventful but tense. Leonard glares at him from over a bowl of porridge, Joanna carries on a conversation without response from anyone but herself, and Jocelyn remains out-of-sight. After picking at his food, he removes himself awkwardly to the bench along the wall and watches Leonard watching him. He is used to this silent game and can do it for hours, as a beast has to be patient to hunt properly; but the man is not as patient as he. With an eventual annoyed sigh, Joanna's father drags a plain wooden chest from a corner of the large room and takes out the tools of his trade.

Joanna, who up to this point had been cleaning their porridge bowls with the sluggishness of a long-suffering kitchen-hand (he used to be one of those, so he recognizes the disgruntled slant of her shoulders), forgets what she is doing and bounds around the long oak table to say, "What are you making, Papa?"

The man smiles as he threads a needle with practiced ease and begins to set a line of stitches in a long piece of cloth. "If I had a child who was less of a tomboy, I might be working on her new dress for the Midwinter festival. But there is no point in making something new when the old has to be patched first."

She stares at the back of her father's head. "If I had pants to wear, I wouldn't tear my dresses so bad."

His hands never pause in their work but he chuckles. "If you had pants, Jo, you'd tear them up too." Her father adds more slyly, "So you _don't _want that dress with the tiny bells for Midwinter?"

"Oh yes of course, Papa!" she cries. "But you're so wonderful you can make them both!" She hugs his neck from behind and then scampers over to the open chest. The girl turns toward the bench after picking something out of it.

"C'mere, Sockless," she beckons.

He shakes his head.

She narrows her eyes. "Sock_less_."

He isn't a bad pet. Come to think of it, he isn't a pet at all. He shakes his head again with a stubborn set to his jaw. The stubborn set to her jaw is identical.

Leonard interrupts their competition of superior stubbornness. "Might as well do what she wants, Sockless," the guest is told dryly.

Joanna calling him a pet name is okay because she is a child. This fierce-browed man, however? He doesn't like it. Standing up, he declares, "My name is not Sockless."

Leonard looks pointedly at his bare feet. "Then either put on a pair of socks, or tell me your real name."

Joanna, hearing more in his silence than Leonard would, tells her father, "He doesn't have a name."

The man puts down his needle, arguing, "Everybody has a name."

"But he doesn't know his yet," Joanna explains. "I told you, Papa, he's _lost_, and he can't get found until he has his name back."

Leonard is clearly working through this by the deep line creasing his forehead but there is no trace of meanness in his face. Finally Leonard looks at him, his daughter's Sockless, with a new expression in his eyes. "I heard of people forgetting who they are" comes the slow response. "Is that what happened?" the man asks, searching his face for confirmation.

Joanna shoots her new friend a sad shrug, as if to say _he won't understand, I'm sorry_.

He nods mutely to Leonard.

"Oh." The tailor's fingers play across the set of fresh stitches. "That's—different, then. Sorry to hear it. That's a bad thing to have happen to a man." He sighs. "I guess you can stay until you know your name," he finishes in an almost murmur and picks up his work again.

Joanna could be sunshine breaking through heavy clouds. She grabs his hand and tugs him over to the table but won't let him sit down. With great cheer, she holds a piece of string along the length of his arm.

"Jo," her father asks in a strange voice, "what are you doing?"

He wordlessly poses the same question.

"Well," the golden-haired child says to them both, "you cannot expect him to wear your clothes every day, can you, Papa? They're much too big! I'm gonna make him new clothes."

Leonard closes his eyes. "Sweetheart, last time you tried to sew—" He doesn't complete his sentence but instead opens his eyes and holds out his hand. "All right, give it over. I'll see what I can do for _Sockless_."

The girl tosses him the string as though she never intended to keep it. "Thank you, Papa!" Cheerfully, Joanna returns to the basin of soap and water to clean the rest of the bowls.

He makes certain to remain motionless as the man measures different parts of his body; yet being so close to Leonard allows him to catch that rapidly becoming familiar scent he first noticed on his clothes. He wonders why it appeals to him so much.

{...}

He tries to tell Joanna's father he knows he cannot expect to live on their kindness. On the third day of his stay, he follows Leonard behind the cottage to a pile of wood and a stump and watches, fascinated, as Leonard cleave logs in two with an ax. Soon the man's breath puffs white in the air and he is swiping at beaded sweat upon his brow.

The task looks simple enough. He points to the ax. "I can chop."

In fact, one of his chores was chopping lots of carrots for stew at the tavern. The wooden logs look like big carrots—sort of.

But Leonard seems to think he is asking to turn cartwheels and dance on his head. "I'm not giving you my ax," he is told. "Being a house guest and being a _trustworthy _house guest are two different things, kid."

Leonard has taken to calling him 'kid' rather than Joanna's favorite nickname. He does not like kid much better than Sockless.

An idea occurs to him. Picking up a short log, he places it on the stump, hands on either side, and holds it there. Leonard shifts his grip on the ax, not fully paying attention, and mutters a short "Thanks" and "Move back."

But he doesn't move, not as the man swings the ax over his shoulder or before the man realizes a person is in danger of being split down the middle. Leonard leaps back at the last second and the ax is jerked to the side and discarded into the snow with a curse. Wild-eyed and not quite frothing at the mouth, Joanna's father snaps, "Are you stupid? I could of killed you!"

He calmly walks over to the abandoned ax, tests the weight of it in his hands, and tries to split the log himself, ignoring the enraged huffing of the man at his back. The blade only goes halfway through the wood and sticks there. He stares at his failed attempt, circles it once in contemplation, before tugging again at the ax's handle. It doesn't want to come out of the wood.

How could he be unable to chop this thing? He's human, isn't he?

"Here, like this." Leonard turns the log on its side and uses his foot to hold it down while he yanks out the ax. After the man stares at him for a brief time, Leonard hands him the ax and repositions the log upright on the stump. A sweep of his hand is permission to try again.

Failing one time is bad enough; failing twice makes him very mad. Leonard puts a stop to his bare-footed kicking at the dumb piece of wood.

"I'll say it again—you're scrawny. You look like you haven't done a day's hard work in your life, so it's no wonder you don't have the muscle to split wood."

He mutters what Bill always used to tell him after a long night of curious questions: "Shut up."

Leonard isn't offended by this. "For telling the truth?"

That gives him pause. He pulls up a shirt sleeve and looks at his arm, then compares it to Leonard's.

Leonard, surprisingly, puts a hand on his slumped shoulder and says without a hint of joking, "All you have to do is practice enough." Then the man rolls down his own sleeves and takes off his gloves and offers them with "It'll make your hands sore, though, as well as your arms, so wear these."

He doesn't know what to say. He watches Leonard disappear around the side of the cottage.

Practice.

He had to practice at words when he was a boy; he is still practicing at words as a man. He has to practice at reading, too, which isn't any easier now than it was eight years ago. Being human seems to be all about practicing at things.

Since he wants to be human, he determinedly lifts the ax in his gloved hands and goes back to trying to chop wood for Leonard and his daughter.

(And Jocelyn, but he doesn't like to think of _her_.)

As he practices, he resolutely ignores the undeniable sensation of being watched. She is out there in the woods at his back, making those crackling noises as she moves about. Whether it's Jocelyn or the Winter Queen, however, he cannot tell.

Not knowing the difference between them is what scares him most.

{...}

It isn't so terrible being under the constant, somewhat suspicious supervision of Leonard or spending his days chasing after Joanna in the snow. The part with Joanna he enjoys most because she, like him, knows something of the wilderness about them in a way a regular human would not.

Of a chattering squirrel high in its nest in a tree, she says, "He's mad 'cause somebody stole his nuts."

He stops rolling a ball of snow between his hands and listens for a moment before agreeing. In fact, the squirrel is naming its mate as the culprit. He wonders if that is a tendency of mated animals rather than mated humans, as he has never noticed Leonard speaking angrily to Jocelyn.

...Though Leonard accuses _him _of plenty of misdeeds, like eating the last biscuit at dinner despite that Joanna had been the obvious biscuit thief. Strangely, Leonard's complaints don't bother him nearly as much as they first did. He understands better now that the man is bristly by nature.

He and Leonard have found a fine line to interacting with each other without violence and seem to walk that line well. Had he known how to do that when he was younger, it would have benefited him greatly. Bill, even, had a tendency to cuff him upside the head when he acted stupid; Frank, on the other hand, was a drunkard and more prone to outright belligerence. A growing boy-man underfoot was an easy target for a temper—and Frank and he had their share of fights, which were often to his disadvantage because he wasn't good at fighting without teeth and claws.

Joanna takes advantage of his distracted thoughts to put snow down the back of his shirt. She giggles while he yelps and flails around trying to shake the coldness out of his clothes.

"You dance funny," he is told afterwards, when he has the coherence to listen.

"What's dancing?" he asks.

Joanna's mouth drops open. An unexpected "PAAPPPAA!" raises the hairs on the back of his neck.

Her father comes running, which means Leonard had probably been watching them muck about in the snow drifts from the window of the cottage. "What's the matter, Jo?" he demands, hurrying toward them.

"Sockless doesn't know how to dance!" she cries.

Leonard is not given time to reply, and neither is 'Sockless' given time to run away. They are summarily shoved together with a resounding _smack_of foreheads.

"I'm too short to dance with him properly," Joanna is saying, oblivious to their mutual horror, "so you dance with Sockless and I'll direct."

"I am _not_ dancing with _him_," snaps Leonard.

Joanna bursts into tears.

He has never seen a small child cry so hard and, well, it's _Joanna _so he hastily grabs for Leonard and pulls the man close with an apologetic look. "We're dancing!" he calls, not bothering to figure out what that could possibly entail or what dancing should look like.

The sobs disappear as suddenly as they began. Joanna sniffles but her eyes are dancing. For the first time, he notices they change color like her father's, lightening from brown to brown-green.

It's hard to ignore the glare boring into his forehead but he manages ignorance of Leonard's displeasure valiantly.

"Papa," the girl chirps, skipping over to them, "you gotta hold his hand—here—and his waist _here_." She moves their limbs like they are two of her dolls. Then, clapping her hands in a rhythm, she begins to hum a tune.

Leonard says next to his ear, "I don't like you," as if the sentiment needs to be expressed.

He drops his gaze and pretends deafness. "What are you doing?" he asks when the man moves at him.

"You're supposed to step back when I step forward" is the grumbled reply.

Oh. He steps back, but it doesn't feel right at all—the gap between their bodies widens.

"For the love of—_wait _until I move first, kid!" The hand tightens at his waist. "If you tilt, we both tilt."

It takes a little more explanation—and Joanna slapping at his legs—to get the rhythm of dancing with Leonard. He kind of likes the activity, unless Leonard steps on his foot or he feels unbalanced. But this close to Leonard he can smell that hint of cider and sweat again—and pine, too, after it has been warmed by the sun. If Leonard smells of these things, what does he smell like? Before he can ask, they finish moving in a full un-interrupted circle and come to a halt.

Leonard congratulates him, "That wasn't half bad."

Because he feels something new, something unexpected, he has to look away. His eyes seek out Joanna and her approval.

Except Joanna is no longer watching them.

Leonard follows his gaze and the man's relaxed posture goes rigid.

In the window of the cottage, Joanna is sitting behind her mother, no doubt plaiting the woman's long golden hair as she likes to do. She is focused on her task, but Jocelyn—Jocelyn has eyes only for her husband and the beast, dancing in a slow, sweet circle upon the winter snow.

{...}

Jocelyn sits next to him rather than her husband at dinner that night. He is uncomfortable at her closeness but powerless to voice his discomfort. To make matters worse, Joanna's father barely acknowledges his presence at the table.

Halfway through the meal, Leonard excuses himself. He wonders how long it will be before Leonard talks to him again with more than abbreviated words and vague noiseless gestures.

Jocelyn props her chin in one hand and watches her husband's retreating back. "He does not understand you." She speaks for the first time since the meal began. The food on her plate lies untouched.

Joanna, crumbling a piece of unwanted bread, has no attention for either of the adults.

Jocelyn returns her eyes to his face. "You can behave like a man. You can dance like a man."

He is uncertain if this is a compliment or a subtle reminder his actions are only pretense. He cannot help but snap, "I was meant to be human."

She is silent for the time it takes Joanna to sigh in abject boredom and leave the table. Then Jocelyn responds as though no lag existed in their conversation. "And I was meant to be a beast. We are kindred, then." She rises gracefully to her slippered feet, tells him, "You can only have my life if you are willing to trade."

With those final words, she goes not to the room she shares with her husband but to the cottage door and slips out into the starless night, heeding a call none but she can hear.

{...}

He pretends to fall asleep but lies quietly, hardly daring to breathe, until the sounds of the cottage are little except a lull of crackling fire and the scurrying feet of mice. Then he slips down the ladder, out of this warm home which isn't his, and into the wild where he is still most comfortable.

On a small hill far from sight and smell of the cottage, he sits and stares at a half moon and realizes he has forgotten his purpose. Joanna makes him forget, whether this is intentional or not; Leonard, perhaps more so, makes him forget.

He shivers.

Boy is not a name. Son is not a name. Sockless, not matter how desperate he may be, is not a name. Not a true name.

He can forgive himself for not finding his name the first time; he was young, newly human, and too enamored of letting the man and woman take care of him. He can, if reluctantly, forgive himself for not finding his name the second time. He had to adapt to being on his own in a world he didn't understand; he had questions to ask, people to observe, and chores to do; he had a girl named Janice who attracted too much of his attention.

But now?

Time is whispering by and he has been heedless of its passing, too caught up in appeasing a child who cannot comprehend the urgency of his situation (even if she somehow knows he is not truly human) and dodging a woman who looks too much like a Winter Queen. He has also spent his precious days hoping a man named Leonard might treat him with something other than the recognition of one stranger to another; that the man might, in fact, begin to like him.

_I don't like you._

But Leonard does not. Leonard likes his daughter. His wife.

He remains a nameless beast beneath this skin; it is the nameless beast Leonard sees in him and does not like. Therefore he must have his true name and shed the beast first.

Another lesson learned, he thinks, lifting his fingers to touch aimlessly at drifting flakes of snow. Humans can sometimes discover things in backwards order but, in doing such, have a clearer vision of why they must practice and learn and achieve.

He discovers he wants Leonard to like him for the man he can be. And now he knows why he must have his name.

**[+++++]**

A gusty sigh blew across my ear and I practically fell out of my desk chair in surprise.

"Love is tedious," intoned Spock wisely from his hither-to unannounced position behind me.

I hadn't waited for him in the kitchen like last Sunday because I had been excited to work through my story. In fact, I sort of assumed he might be fed up with his duty and decide to leave me well and truly alone.

Apparently not. "You realize you cannot discontinue the story at this venture," the Sidhe dryly informed me.

I climbed back into my chair with a grimace. "Why's that, Spock?" I asked, mainly to irritate him.

He made a noise of displeasure at his nickname but did not correct me. "I feel I should enlighten you of the existence of certain fans of your…" He waved his hand at my laptop. "…_monstrosity_. Does this knowledge ease your worry?"

I gaped at him. "Really? But how—?" I had shared this story idea with no one despite my misgivings of a Sidhe as a capable beta-reader. How did he know I was worried about the fairy tale's reception by my peers?

"Do not think," he told me, "you are not under surveillance by every being of Faerie. We must have this completed. _On time_," he added with a sniff. "Now do continue, k-l-meri."

Faerie folk or not, who was I to deny a fan base their chosen method of crack? So I returned to writing under the watchful eyes of my very own, freakishly (and unexpectedly) Vulcan-like supervisor.

**[+++++]**

**The Snow Girl and the Red Wren**

"For the sake of everything sane, stop fiddling about!" Leonard kneels in front a chair and pulls at the strings tangled about the golden-haired man's fingers. "Did nobody teach you how to lace boots?"

He winces when Leonard yanks the laces tightly, causing the top part of the boot to squeeze uncomfortably around his calf but says nothing as Leonard proceeds to give the next boot the same rough treatment.

The man complains, "I swear it's like having another kid in the house."

"I am not a kid," he protests without thinking.

Those eyes—more brown than green today—flick up to his, surprised. "No, you aren't—which is why I haven't figured out why you have the education of one. Forgettin' your name usually doesn't mean forgettin' _everything_."

That's unfair. He plants one of his now properly laced boots against the man's knee and shoves slightly in retaliation. "I can't _learn _if no one wants to teach me."

The man wraps his hands around the toe of the boot and holds it still, frowning.

"Papa!"

Leonard lets go and stands up, a flush of red spreading along the side of his neck. "Joanna," he says in a strangled reprimand, "don't sneak up on us like that!"

Joanna, hands on her hips, wants to know, "Why aren't we going? You _said _we were going!"

The man lifts his hands with "All right, all right. No fussing, sweetheart. Papa and Sockless—" Leonard drawls the name with amusement. "—were just talking. 'N trying to get his boots on without breaking 'em."

'Sockless' is given a wary but firm stare and told, "You can't take off them the whole time we're outside."

His feet already hate the confinement but it is best to nod in agreement. He knows now Joanna is determined to have her way, more so than he ever thought a human could want to, and if he doesn't have her, he doesn't have a place to stay. Leonard would toss him out, helplessly nameless or not.

Once Leonard disappears to another room Joanna gives his shoulder a sympathetic pat. "It's hard to get him to like you, I know," she tells him, "but you have to keep tryin', Sockless."

If he thinks too hard about how she knows what she knows, he will hurt himself. So he doesn't think, but instead sorts through his knowledge of fairs. Janice had coaxed him out of the tavern early one evening into a street crowded with people and laughter and dancing and wheels of color. Of all the things which happened to him in the company of the tavern's Bill and Janice, and even the mean-hearted Frank, the fair was brightness in a dark time. It was a reminder humans know how to be joyous, not just bitter.

His stomach turns with excitement at the thought of experiencing that joy again. He smiles at Joanna and lets her tug him to the door of the cottage while listening to her cry aloud, "Papa, we mustn't be late! What if all of the gingerbread is gone!"

Leonard's voice is lightened by laughter as he returns, a small cloak in hand. "There are always plenty of sweet breads at a fair, Jo. We can't leave until _you're _ready."

Once cloaked, Joanna spreads her arms wide and spins in a twirl of bright red. She giggles as the cloak settles about her again and lifts its hood to hide her grinning face. The red-hooded little girl rejoins her friend at the door, taking his hand. "Everybody's ready now!" she announces. Her father, he notices, stares at their linked hands, something indecisive but fleeting passing across his face. That causes a prickle of warning at the back of his neck. He stays utterly still when Leonard, smiling but with a new consternation in his eyes, gently takes his daughter's other hand and tries subtly to maneuver her away. Joanna, oblivious to the tension between the two men, only clutches harder at her friend's hand and pulls them both out of the cottage.

"There's gingerbread and ribbons and puppet shows—" the child chatters between them.

A darting figure at the corner of his eye catches his attention. He looks up, watching the dive of a bird to a tree branch where it settles with a chortle. It picks at one of its red feathers before tracking their procession down the cottage lane, still laughing.

{...}

Puppets are fascinating, especially when beating one another with oversized sticks. He thinks so, Joanna thinks so, but Leonard does not and is too busy skimming through groups of people with worried eyes.

He doesn't know why but he asks if he can help.

The man bounces his leg in clear agitation and mutters, "She said she'd meet us here. I—oh, damn, I shouldn't have let her go by herself!"

"Where?" he asks, already guessing Leonard is speaking of his often absent wife.

Leonard glances at him. "Her father's place." He jerks his chin in a certain direction. "Up the hill."

"Oh."

He has never been on the hill, not even as a beast. It's well-guarded by men with bows.

"Can you watch Jo?"

Shocked, and perhaps showing it, he nods mutely. Leonard works his way through the tight crowd of people and is soon swept from sight.

Joanna grabs his hand with a roll of her eyes and a "I never thought he'd go! C'mon!"

"But—" he protests, looking at one female puppet screeching and whacking another, supposedly male puppet.

"We can make our own show at home, silly," says the little girl. "Now is not the time to dawdle!"

"Fairs aren't for dawdling?"

"Not when we have somewhere important to be." Joanna squeezes his hand as she drags him between two booths and to the outskirts of the fair. He looks forlornly over his shoulder at a giant of a fellow snacking on a headless gingerbread man.

"You aren't paying attention!" comes the accusation as he stumbles around objects and over his own feet, tethered, it seems, to a flying machine that is an energetic child.

"Sorry. What are we doing?"

"Visiting my friend," Joanna says. "The redbird knows your name!"

He suddenly isn't missing the fair at all. "How?"

They duck under a fence where a donkey is tied and brays at them in dismay for leaving him behind when an adventure is afoot. He calls out an apology to it but the donkey only snorts and bares its buck teeth with a promise to bite him in the future.

When they come to a low wall—the "lower gate" Joanna calls it—he stops because Joanna seems rooted in place. She gives him a long, considering stare. She asks, "If you get your name, do you promise to help my Mamma?" She sounds too serious for a child of six.

"But how can I help?" he wants to know, having no clue himself.

"Just promise me!" she asks of him urgently.

So he does.

It occurs to him belatedly that Joanna might have no more clue what her Mamma needs from him than he does.

{...}

Leonard's heart sinks as a housemaid leads him into the occupied parlor of Jocelyn's father 's house. The lord, now sporting silver-gray hair at his temples and lines of age, is relaxing by a fire. His father-in-law seems surprised by the visit, which makes Leonard's stomach sink.

"Leonard," the man waves him forward with one heavily ringed hand, "what brings you here? Is there not a festival in the village this evening? I know how fond my granddaughter is of festivals."

"Sir," he says with a hastily made bow, even now uncomfortable in the lord's presence despite their amicable relationship. "I came in search of my wife. She was to invite you to join us at the town fair."

The sudden alarm in the lord's eyes mirrors Leonard's. Pushing a lap blanket, he hurries toward Leonard. "You let her travel alone?"

"I have a child—" Leonard swallows, barely stopping the words _and an unusual child-like man _from spilling forth. "—to watch, sir." He adds more softly, "I also vowed I would never chain Jocelyn to my side. When she... wanders, I can only hope she remembers her family and returns to us."

"Hope is a fragile thing, made to be broken, I'm afraid."

His father-in-law sighs deeply, not unlike Jocelyn's sigh when she has lingered at the cottage too long and feels trapped by its four walls. Leonard does not know how to answer that sigh from Jocelyn's father any better than from his wife.

"She is not here, Leonard. Perhaps she is looking for you and Joanna."

He shakes his head, knowing such a thing would never happen.

The same question always surfaces: why? She has a good life and family who loves her, a husband and a child; Leonard works hard so Jocelyn wants for nothing and yet... what does she require that her current life cannot provide?

Leonard does not realize he voiced this aloud until a hand lands on his shoulder. The lord squeezes it in genuine sympathy. "You are a good man, Leonard. If Jocelyn could love you, she would."

Hearing the echo from Jocelyn's mouth years past, he stiffens. But he cannot say he does not understand; he does now, too clearly. Jocelyn's heart is consumed with a love for something else and always has been. He is but the man devoted to her who makes her life bearable until she can have what she truly wants.

Whatever that desire is.

Leonard rakes a hand through his hair. "Your words give me no comfort," he admits. "Every time... it is harder for me to watch her go but also harder for me to continue to worry for her when she is gone." He looks at the circle of silver on his left hand. "Some days I am so angry I feel more like a beast than a man. I want to lock her in our room no matter how she cries or begs but I simply can't," he finishes, choking on a deep-seated shame.

"I know your heart exactly," Jocelyn's father comforts him. "I have often struggled with the same feelings since she began to wander as a child. I gave into my anger more times than I care to remember. I did not want to lose her, she who is the only part I have left of my wife." The lord sighs again.

Leonard murmurs, "Jocelyn's mother? You never speak of her."

The man returns to his chair and sinks into it, inexplicably weary, to face the fire. His voice, too, is filled with shame. "I cannot. I was crueler to her than any other." He laughs lowly, a strange sound. "Jocelyn is too much like her father."

Leonard slowly circles the man and the chair. He has never had more than a passing polite conversation with Jocelyn's father. In truth, he knows he need not have been afraid to speak to the man. His father-in-law is also a person who both loves and suffers because of Jocelyn. He asks, "What do you mean?"

The lord's eyes grow distant with memory. "I married Jocelyn's mother despite my love for another. Though our marriage was not an unhappy one, I continued to see this other woman. Once my wife was with child, my shame became unbearable and I ended the affair. But the death of my wife was more horrible than you can imagine, for I had to no chance to earn her forgiveness or try to be the husband she deserved. We were only beginning to know one another." He looks up to Leonard then and confesses, "Yet even now does _she _still linger in my thoughts. Perhaps a guilty soul such as mine is not meant be redeemed, or forgiven."

Out of respect, Leonard allows the bitter man a moment of silence. He prepares two drinks from the carafe brought in by a servant and offers one to his father-in-law before remarking quietly, "She must been special, this other woman you loved before your wife."

"Yes," agrees the lord. They savor the taste of the strong mulled wine. "She is a winter star—beautiful to look upon but always far from reach. I should not have wanted her but I was as foolish as every other mortal man who thought he could love a fey without repercussions."

Leonard goes cold, though the fire is hot in the fireplace and the room warm enough to bare skin. "Fey?" he repeats.

The lord's face, lined with years of guilt, suddenly hints at a younger, more confident man. The lord raises his glass in a mocking salute to an absent presence. "Hair and eyes as black as a raven's. Skin of pearl. She was—is—perfection. That is the lure of Fair Folk, Leonard. They know how to draw us into their world and turn ours to illusion."

He inhales a sharp breath. "You cannot mean you were enchanted, sir. Fair Folk are an old wives' tale! Stories I read to my daughter."

"I have loved one, Leonard. I can tell you They are as real as we are—but colder of heart," he ends gravely.

"Were that true, then we should all fear to sleep at night."

The lord simply stares at him.

Leonard denies the idea fiercely. "Am I to believe in ghosts and goblins now?"

"Believe what you will. Belief cannot change the truth."

Seeing the certainty in his father-in-law's eyes, Leonard swallows the lump in his throat. "I must find my wife, and return to Joanna."

Jocelyn's father nods somewhat absently. "You know where to search for her," he says, returning his stare to the fire. "She will be looking for Them, exactly as her old man once did."

Comprehension dawns at last, and Leonard's drink slips from his nerveless fingers and shatters upon the floor in streaks of amber liquid and glass. Jocelyn's father is dismissive of the mess, never taking his eyes from the hearth's dancing flames. "Call a maid in to clean it."

But Leonard is no longer listening. He knocks into a servant come to investigate the noise, forgetting to apologize for his rudeness in his swift flight from the house upon the hill.

{...}

Joanna clasps her hands in front of her and calls, "Redbird, what is the name of this beast?"

Something cackles shrilly in one of the nearby trees. At Joanna's side, he turns a slow circle, hoping to glimpse this redbird. Joanna repeats her question.

Leaves rustle as a blur of red moves from tree to tree. A miniature man leaps into sight upon a wide bough high above their heads. The creature is unlike anything he has seen before; its nose is long like a beak, its skin nut-brown. Beady, black eyes regard them with curosity. About its shoulders is a red cloak tailored to its small size; an uncanny a replica of Joanna's cloak, he realizes.

"What does a name matter to a beast?" the Redbird whistles from between pointed teeth.

Joanna is prevented from stepping toward the creature by the hard grip of his hand. He shakes his head fiercely at her. She frowns, too unafraid to understand his wariness.

"So this is the beast," clucks the Redbird, scurrying to another branch to better observe them. "Such a _pretty _beast—but nameless, tsk-tsk-tsk."

Joanna huffs. "I told you that already! You said you knew his name."

"Yes, yes, yes, I do know," the little creature assures her, chattering. He cocks his head at the pair of humans. "But no one gets something for nothing. What will you give me for a name?"

"You cannot give me _any _name. I want my true name," he says with a firm set to his mouth.

The Redbird tilts its head to the opposite side this time and grins. "Clever, clever, clever! What will you give me for _your _name?"

He asks what it wants.

It hops to the lowest branch of the tree, still some feet above them, and whistles long and low. "I trade only in precious things," it announces. "Dragon's gold and mountain gems and mortal hearts. You have one of those, beast—a mortal's heart." There is a sly squint to its tiny eyes. "We can trade: your name for your heart."

He puts a hand to his chest, wondering how such a trade would be possible.

But Joanna does not like this idea. "You cannot take his heart, redbird! That's not fair!"

"Then you trade with me, little snow girl," the Redbird says, displaying its teeth. "On your sixteenth birthday, bring me a heart that belongs to you."

Joanna looks up at the redbird, worrying her lip. "But where would I get an extra heart?"

"Ask your mother" is the mysterious reply. The Redbird rocks the tree limb in obvious excitement. "Can't get something for nothing, no, no, no!"

A snarl has been building in his throat since the creature appeared; he lets his distrust be heard and tugs Joanna away from the thing in the tree.

She digs the heels of her boots into the snow in resistance. "No!" the girl cries, smacking at his hand. "We can't leave without your name! I won't be sixteen for _ages_, Sockless! I can find a heart by then!"

He drops to his knees in the snow and holds her still by the shoulders. "Trading in hearts is bad. We will find my name some other way."

She looks close to crying. "But Mamma can't be happy until she's free, and she can't be free until you show her how."

He shakes his head sadly. "No, Joanna. I don't know how to be free. I'm sorry."

She starts to cry in earnest. He pulls her close but his eyes search the copse for the creature in red.

There.

It moves swiftly through a dark pine, higher and higher, to the very top of the tree before flinging itself into the air. A bird—a winter wren—spreads its red-feathered wings and catches an air current. Circling above their heads, it cries out once before flying south.

He thinks he hears cackling all the way back to the fair.

{...}

A man standing by the lower gate spies their return. With alarm, he recognizes the slope of the man's shoulders as Leonard's and his heart contracts painfully. Leonard's thunderous expression, contrasted by the pallor of his skin, is all the more frightening because of the terror lurking in his green eyes. Once they are within arm's reach, Leonard sends him to the ground with a hard-knuckled blow. Pain blossoms fire-hot in his jaw.

"Papa!" Joanna gasps, shocked.

Leonard's voice trembles with rage and fear. "I should have known better than to trust you. I don't know who—or _what_—you are, but you won't take my child!" he spits. "Keep away from Joanna!"

"No, Papa, no! It's my fault!" the child protests, pulling futilely at her father's clothes.

But Leonard, deaf to her pleas, forces her away. When they can no longer be seen, a new shadow detaches from the distant backdrop of trees and comes to kneel beside him. Jocelyn touches the corner of his mouth then studies the gleam of his blood on her fingertip.

He cannot see her dark eyes for the depths of her cloak's cowl but they hold him nonetheless. She croons to him, "I will help you."

"Why?"

Her answer, when it comes, is surprisingly sincere. "You saved my child. The redbird wants to snare Joanna as he once did me, and you would not allow it. For this, I can help you. Come."

She rises and moves silently from him, not bothering to check if he follows her.

He asks as they walk, "Where are we going?"

"To my father's house," the woman tells him. "He is not unkind to beasts."

{...}

The house upon the hill is less grand than he imagined it might be, for he remembers Janice's frequent late-night tales (mainly complaints wrapped up in story-telling, he eventually realized) of wealthy lord's families and their piles of hoarded gold. The lord himself is ordinary-looking, with a only trace of his handsomeness from youth. But he is also kind, as Jocelyn said.

"You have summer eyes," her father comments, peering at him from the depths of a large upholstered chair. "I always thought Jocelyn's eyes would turn to summer like my wife's but they never did. Who are you, son?"

Jocelyn is occupied looking at herself in the gilded mirror above the fireplace. "He does not yet have a proper name," she remarks, her back to them. "He is still a beast."

"Nonsense, Princess. Am I to call him what I please, then?" questions the man.

"Joanna calls me Sockless," he offers.

The lord has a deep bellow of a laugh. "Oh but Joanna is a gem! But that won't do; you must have a man's name. Do you like Christopher?"

He thinks about it. "No."

"George?"

"No," Jocelyn interrupts. "Your name is George, Father."

Looking at his daughter with raised eyebrows, the lord wonders, "Why is it terrible to know two Georges, Jocelyn?"

She has returned her gaze to the mirror's reflection; her mouth shapes a soundless question: _Do I look like my mother?_

"You may take my father's name," the lord decides. "Tiberius."

He tests the sound of it. "Tiberius." It is strange, but not.

"Tiberius is a brave name," he is assured. Yet the man is looking at his humming, golden-haired daughter as he says this.

The glass of mirror gains a strange opaqueness as Jocelyn's melodious hum lures not only the attention of the lord but also the household servants, drawing them in as an enchantment might. He is immune to its pull but, ever-curious, approaches the mirror to discover the opaqueness is actually a veil which stirs and shimmers once he stands opposite of Jocelyn. A soft glow begins to line the frame of the mirror, working its way inward to a central point.

Then, as the veil parts, he quickly looks away, certain whatever is lurking behind it is nothing he wants to see—or wants to see him.

Jocelyn stops humming. The sudden silence stalemates the magic in the air. "Tiberius," she names him, turning so they are face-to-face. "A mirror shows a man his true self."

He disagrees. "Mirrors can lie."

"This mirror cannot lie to me," the woman says too softly.

"As a husband cannot lie to you?" He meets her blue-black eyes in an unspoken dare. "As a redbird cannot lie to you?"

Her lips part.

"Who are you?" they ask of each other.

A sharp cry—a pained cry—shatters the remaining magic around them and, in doing so, cracks the mirror framing their twin faces.

He turns, alarmed, as the lord attempts to rise from his chair but crashes to his knees on the crest of the cry.

"I saw them," the man gasps, "in the mirror!" He keens and clutches at his chest, almost doubling over.

Jocelyn is a statue but he is not. He kneels, eyes wide, at the lord's side but does not what he should do. A servant quickly follows suit, questioning fearfully, "M'lord? Are you ill?"

A shaking hand lifts to cup his cheek, the fingers calloused and rough against his smooth skin. "Her face—her face was your face, boy." The lord's eyes move beyond him to Jocelyn. "And _her_ face was my daughter's. _In the mirror._" The lord crumples against the servant, putting a hand to his mouth as if to catch a sob. His face is unnaturally pale.

Jocelyn stirs and addresses the circle of house servants gathering at the open door. "Father is unwell. Take him to his chambers."

"What ails him?" he asks, looking at her.

"I do not know." She drifts away to a closed door, eerily unalarmed.

"Where are you going, m'lady?" a maid cries to her.

A withered old man in plain brown attire answers instead. "She'll go to where the wild roses grow. Never mind her; fetch the new garden-hand to help carry m'lord upstairs."

Jocelyn, heeding none of them, vanishes like a ghost from the room.

**[+++++]**

"Ridiculous. Are these people deaf, blind, _and _dumb?"

I ignored the Sidhe as I finished The Snow Girl and the Red Wren.

He continued, "I blame this Winter Queen. How foolish to have lain with a mortal! She was obviously disgusted with herself and took revenge upon the king—"

"Lord."

He said flatly, "Excuse me, _lord_—by stealing his rightful heir."

Is that what they did in his Faerie? Make others suffer for their mistakes? I argued, "Jocelyn is his heir too. Honestly, must you think with a two-dimensional brain, Spock?"

The Sidhe's mouth twitched.

I smiled at the laptop screen and said, "Do you want to know what happens next?"

He resumed his position by my shoulder. "You assume I care."

Since his actions belied his words, I only shook my head and returned to the world of Jim and Bones.


	4. Part II, Cont'd

**The Winter Twins**

Jocelyn's father is put to bed with a soothing draught but the longer the lord lies still the more restless he becomes. Jocelyn is gone and only the guest 'Tiberius' is left to watch the sleeping man clench and unclench the bedsheets in his fists.

This is his doing somehow, his and Jocelyn's, but he does not fully understand what it is about them, together, that frightened her father. Yet he is guilty, and so he repents his guilt by keeping vigil at the man's bedside, holding a large but trembling hand in his own, not unlike a young woman who had once comforted him when he was fevered, new to the world, and very much afraid.

The lord's chambers are nearly as large as the main room of the cottage. He wonders how the fireplace, farthest from the bed, is able to win over the natural chill of the house. As he watches tiny flames smoldering amongst the kindle, a house servant enters the room to stoke the dying fire and also to stare at him with open curiosity. Yet no one asks him to leave, just as no one speaks to him. All occupants of this manored house are walking shadows; he too makes himself into a shadow as he waits for the answer to an unspoken question. The servant leaves the room as soundlessly as he arrived.

Soon the light of day fades to a red-gold and tendrils of it slither down the walls of the chamber; then the daylight vanishes altogether and darkness settles in its place. There comes a soft tread of boots in the hallway and, in company of the monotonous sound, a hint of a familiar scent. Back turned to the door, his ears strain to listen and subsequently he catches the hesitant pause of those boots upon the room's threshold.

Leonard walks slowly into the lord's chambers and, silent, circles to the opposite side of the occupied bed to stare at his father-in-law's drawn face. The silence is unable to last, not while unsaid words create a strain between them.

"Jocelyn said he collapsed."

He answers with the sole hope of relieving the invisible guilt bearing down upon his shoulders. "Yes."

Leonard's troubled gaze seeks him then. "Why won't you leave this family alone, kid?"

He lifts his eyes to Leonard's, sees the blanketed anger there. "I am Tiberius."

He shouldn't have said that. By the look in Leonard's eyes, he shouldn't have said _anything_.

"I know what you are—you're a thief," the man accuses. "You're here to steal what isn't yours—whether it's a name or a little girl or a wife."

The accusation burns like a brand. "I would never take them from you," he says, struggling for words. "You... love them." Dropping his eyes, he waits for Leonard to name him further. Stranger. Beast.

"_Leonard_."

Leonard's attention wavers and at last breaks, drawn by the dry, faint croak of his father-in-law. "Sir? Do you still feel... ill? What do you need?"

"My child," whispers the old man. "Where is my child?"

Leonard's eyes darken. "Jocelyn isn't here. I'm sorry."

The lord shakes his head listlessly. "Not—Jocelyn. My other child. Tiberius."

His heart leaps into his throat and lodges there.

Leonard leans over and lays a hand against the man's chest, muttering, "He is too cold. Sir?"

"Tiberius!"

Such a cry cannot go unanswered. He leans forward, caught. "You named me Tiberius," he offers.

The hand he is holding grips his fingers hard, almost painfully.

"I should have known," the man says wearily. "I _did _know, when I first saw you. You have her summer eyes."

Leonard interjects, "Sir, you cannot—this man is not your Tiberius!"

"No," agrees the lord, suddenly relaxed on his nest of his pillows and blankets. "My wife named him before he ever left the womb. Not Tiberius—James. My son James."

Leonard pales. "Jocelyn is your wife's child."

The lord denies it. "Do you not see the truth? She is _her_ daughter, Leonard. I have raised _her _child, not my wife's!"

Leonard's face pales further and he sways in the firelight. "You're talking about Jocelyn. Jocelyn is human."

"Leonard," the lord beckons to his son-in-law, voice heavy, as Leonard backs away, one step at a time. "It was something none of us could see." Jocelyn's father—his father?—turns his eyes to his son. "Not until you came."

"No!" cries Leonard. "What is the matter with you? _He's _the beast!" Nothing the lord says stops Leonard from running away.

{...}

Leonard is alone in the parlor with the cracked mirror, braced against the mantel like a man barely strong enough to stand. A golden-haired man's entrance goes unacknowledged.

After the telling a somewhat stilted story of a man with two lovers and two children, one born of each woman, the lord sleeps, exhausted but strangely peaceful. The need to find Leonard drove him to this room, but now that he is here he finds himself drawn to the mirror rather than the man. The face staring back at him in a broken sliver of cold-clear glass is wide-eyed, new—the face of a James.

"How does a… James feel?" he questions, looking at his somewhat dirty, tan-less hands with the same wonder he felt at the age of eight. Is he truly James? He looks hopefully to Leonard.

Fire shadows flicker across the dark-haired man's face but beneath their playful dancing is an indifferent mask.

He tentatively tries another name he has not spoken before. "Leonard?"

That stirs the man, who seems defeated. Except Leonard's words are anything but defeat. "You can't tell anyone who you are."

The room loses its warmth, and his lungs turn to ice. "But..."

Leonard lifts his head to implore him, "Please, don't!" Desperation twists in the man's eyes, and fear. "If my wife knew—" Leonard inhales a shaky breath. "She can never know."

He… understands.

He hates, quite suddenly and fiercely, that he understands. Searching Leonard's face for a small hope, a sign of jesting, proves futile. His hands fall loosely to his sides. "I am the child of the lord and his wife. She is the child of the lord and..." His voice sticks as he pictures a feminine, fey face with too-dark eyes.

Leonard covers his eyes briefly with a trembling hand. "I'm beggin' you, _please_. If not for me, then for Joanna, who needs her mother." The man is colorless.

He wants to agree, simply to remove the anguish in Leonard's heart, but knowledge of his own need tricks him into making a half-promise. "I will tell no man, woman, or child of my true name."

"Thank you" comes the faint reply. "I know this is an... unkind thing to ask of you, but I love my family," Leonard finishes. "I hope you can understand."

He nods mutely.

Leonard visibly sags. "All right." He runs a hand through his wild hair. "All right, we should… should go home. Try to get some sleep." His tone speaks of how easily he imagines sleep will come to either of them.

"Home?" Something clenches his chest in a fist-like grip.

Leonard admits, "Jo won't speak to me. She just keeps crying. If I let you come back—well, I don't have a choice, do I?" Leonard looks at him, weary. "You have power over me now, kid."

"I am not kid. I have a name..." But he has agreed not to share his name with anyone; for all intents and purposes, he remains as he was before the vision in the mirror. Even now, that mirror reflects sad summer eyes in an unremarkable, lost face.

A hand gently ghosts his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I've joked about what to call you but I know you only put up with the stupid nicknames to make Joanna happy. A real name means something. If it's all right with you..."

Leonard waits until their gazes meet.

"Jim," Leonard names him softly. "It's another version of James."

The invisible fist lets go. "Jim." An almost-true name—more than he ever thought he might have. He could be a Jim. "Yes," he says, salvaging what he can of himself, "call me Jim."

{...}

Joanna doesn't greet him with words when he enters the cottage. Instead, choking on a sob, she flings her arms around his middle and presses her face just under his ribcage. He strokes her hair until her shoulders stop shaking.

"I didn't mean it," she whispers. "I didn't mean to get you in trouble, Sockless."

He looks at Leonard, saying, "It's okay."

She lets go of him and steps back, sniffling, but trying for dignified tears.

He tells her, "My name is Jim."

Her eyes widen, skating over to her father then back to him. "How did you find your name?"

"Your Papa found my name," he murmurs, feeling Leonard's eyes on him.

Her face clears of heartbreak. "Your name is Jim!" She crows and bounces on the balls of her feet. "Oh, Papa," she cries and hugs her father enthusiastically, apparently forgiving of all his sins, "thank you! Now Sockless can stay with us!"

It's all right, he thinks, if Joanna still calls him Sockless. As long as Leonard does not.

Leonard pats her back. "Staying with us is up to Jim, Joanna. He can if he wants to." But Leonard's eyes are pleading, quite clearly, _don't stay._

He drops his eyes to his feet but makes no promises. Instead, his first order of business is to remove the horrible boots strangling his feet.

{...}

The routine of living together is easy to return to, as though the disaster of the fair never happened.

Except Jocelyn follows him now as she never did before; she is a constant presence at his side and when she is away from him she inevitably comes back like a tide. He asks her one day why she won't leave him alone.

Her answer is "You are changing again. I want to see what you become."

The reflection in a bucket of melted snow shows him as no different than the night he returned from the lord's house, other than the fading bruise on his jaw from Leonard's unforgiving blow. "What are you becoming?" he wonders quietly to it.

Leonard catches him in the middle of this contemplation and, shocking him, overturns the bucket into the earth. "Don't do that."

Jim asks, surprised, "Why not?"

But the man does not give the reason, only the command. It isn't until Jim catches sight of Jocelyn in the bedroom she shares with Leonard staring at herself in an oval hand-mirror and whispering, though she is alone, that he understands Leonard's reaction.

{...}

When Joanna is bored, she attempts to teach him how to bake. He is of the opinion the girl isn't quite certain how to bake herself.

During one of their culinary adventures in the cottage's compact kitchen, her father conducts frequent assessments of their progress. Currently, the man peers from the haphazard bread soup to the pair of wide-eyed bakers and drawls, "There's more flour on the floor than in the bowl." The corner of his mouth lifts wryly. "Two kids—that's what I've got."

One of the bakers glares at the tailor's retreating back. "I am Jim, not kid."

Joanna pats her companion sympathetically with a wet spoon instead of her hand. Not that it matters; his shirt is already sticky. "Papa likes calling you a kid," she explains with a knowing nod. "You shouldn't tell him not to."

"But my name is Jim," he argues and sticks his tongue out at her.

She responds in kind then giggles.

"_Hmmm_," comes the echo from across the room, "wonder which one of them I could trade in? Maybe get a milking cow instead."

Joanna hops up and down in proper horrified fashion. "Not me, Papa, not me!"

He fully expects Leonard to appease his daughter and say Jim is the more easily disposable of the pair but the man snorts amusedly at them as he situates himself behind a table covered in strips of cloth, dark colors of thread, and a set of tiny cutting knives. "Well... Jim's the one who does his chores without complaint."

The girl's mouth drops open. "But he does them badly! He caught your cloak on fire 'n drowned your shoes!"

Now Leonard laughs and winks playfully in his direction. "He's learnin'."

He blinks, not certain if he should respond to that, or _how _he should respond if he is supposed to.

Joanna folds her arms in a perfect imitation of her father. "You just like him better 'cause he's got boy parts," she says, aggrieved as only the young can be. "Well I'm _glad _I don't have boy parts!" The spoon in her hand is discarded in the bowl of bread soup—which was supposedly to be dough—and Joanna goes outside, unmindful of her straggly hair or oversized clothes.

"Stop grinning," Leonard says pointedly to Jim.

His grin grows.

"I said stop that," the man grumbles but his mouth is fighting between a scowl and a grin of its own. After a while, expression under control again, Leonard lifts one eyebrow. "Looks like she left you to clean up the mess. Try not to put salt in the sugar jar again."

He looks at the open jar next to the bowl contemplatively before sticking his finger in it.

"For the love of—don't do that either, Jim! We have to cook with that stuff!"

"But how else will I know if it's salt or sugar?" His finger definitely tastes sweet like sugar. Leonard does not seem to appreciate the ignorant batting of his eyes.

Without another word—or argument—the tailor unfolds a strip of blue cloth and proceeds to mark it with charcoal, ignoring Jim's noisy but determined efforts to beat flour out of a shirt. Whereas the flour comes out in big, white puffs (making him cough), unfortunately the yolk stains do not.

Not that he cares overly much. The borrowed shirt is Leonard's. Joanna had said it was the correct attire to wear when making kitchen messes. However, after interpreting Leonard's look as disgruntled when he returns the shirt, he decides next time he should give more thought to Joanna's suggestions before agreeing to them.

"Sorry," he apologizes.

Leonard takes the ruined fabric from him and tosses it somewhere far away. "Don't worry about it," Leonard says, clearly not as upset as he previously appeared to be. "Jo is happy. That's worth a lot of shirts."

He wants to ask _are you happy too? _but cannot seem to speak the words. Not then.

No, it isn't until he has had a sip of too-strong cider in the evening and is waiting for Leonard to return from the bed-time reading with Joanna that words stumble over themselves to get out of his mouth.

He asks Leonard, as the man settles beside him on the long bench sighing contentedly, "Do you like me?"

The man grows too still. "_Like you?_" echoes. "I guess I do."

"Do you love me?"

Leonard cuts his eyes sharply to him, brows drawn. "Jim… Sometimes I think you say words just to hear how they sound."

"I ask so I can learn," he disagrees without heat. He looks down at his open palm, remembering. "A woman once loved me as a son." His hand curls into a fist and he lets the fist rest on his leg.

Leonard draws in a soundless breath, then another.

He adds, "Joanna loves me as a friend. Do you love me, Leonard?"

"I don't," the man admits quietly. "I can't. Why are you asking me this?"

His gaze drifts toward the nearest window. "The moon is only missing a small portion of itself. I had to know."

Leonard leans forward, hunching his shoulders, and stares straight ahead. "You should never ask me that again."

"Because of Jocelyn," he guesses.

"Not because of Jocelyn," the man says, but no explanation is forthcoming.

{...}

Two days later he wanders the woods by the cottage and stops to pick a small white flower blended in with the snow. He lingers there, hearing the occasional snap of fallen branches.

"Why is Tiberius unhappy?" The question floats ahead of the woman who emerges from the surrounding trees.

"Jim," he corrects, turning to Jocelyn. "Your grandfather is Tiberius." _Our _grandfather. Pinned by a shrewd look, he is afraid she might discover that knowledge so he hedges, "Leonard is looking for you. You should come home."

The woman's dark eyes move past him, forgetting him as they drink in the quiet calm of the woods. "What is a home?" she muses. "Is a home where you feel warm? Safe? Loved?" Her eyes return to his again. "I feel none of those things when I am in that house. Only out here am I safest, warmest."

Something hot flares under his breast bone. "But this place doesn't love you like Leonard and Joanna do, or it would accept you for what you are."

Unflinching, she demands, "What am I? Tell me!"

By the feral look of her eyes, it is clear to him exactly what she is. He doesn't need the scent of the bitter magic clinging to her as identification anymore. Yet he promised Leonard his silence.

He gives her what truth he can: "You are bitter because you are not loved by what you love most, and you are blind to the price of your bitterness."

For a long moment, Jocelyn says nothing. Only when he turns away to escape the oppressive silence does she speak: "You also are bitter, beast, because you are not loved by what you love most."

"But I am not blind," he counters too softly, and leaves.

{...}

The exchange with Jocelyn lingers with him past dusk to the slow rise of the white moon, which he struggles not to see in the window of the cottage. Since he has Joanna's undivided attention as they play a game with coins and sticks upon the cottage floor, he asks her, "Do you miss her?" Neither of them need mention who he refers to.

"Sometimes," the girl replies absently, spinning a copper coin until knocks down three of his sticks.

"I cannot help," he says quietly, thinking of the secret he cannot share with Jocelyn—or Joanna.

Joanna props her chin in her hand and tilts her head back to look at him. "You already said that. Why are you still sad about it?"

"Aren't you?"

She shrugs one small shoulder. "When I was very little I didn't understand. Then I grew up."

He frowns. "But you are not grown."

Her mouth curves with a secretive smile. "Who is to say what is old or young to Us? _We who live under the hill, not the sea!_" she sings mischievously.

"There's a land under the sea?"

Joanna groans. "Sock_less!_" She scampers from their place on the floor to her room and returns with a hard leather book, its edges worn by handling. "Here, look at this." She turns to an illustrated page and puts the book under his nose. "A land beneath the sea!"

"Where are their legs?"

Again, the child groans. "They're like fish. You really don't know the story of the Undersea?" Suddenly she looks anxious. "I won't tell it as good as Papa does."

He holds out the book. "Please?"

And that, it seems, is all the encouragement the child needs. Settling against his side, she pulls up her knees and balances the book between them. She begins to weave a tale of mermaids and moonlit oceans, of ageless kingdoms built of oyster shells and horrid sea-witches.

Near the end of the story he lifts his drowsy eyes from the book, spying motion in another otherwise pleasantly still room.

Joanna's sweet voice flows like a carefully woven spell: "...looking upon her prince and his lover, the mermaid knew she could not let her love destroy his happiness, and with the dagger clutched to her breast and tears upon her fair cheeks she returned to herself to the sea."

He shivers, caught under Leonard's unreadable stare. Joanna sighs, unaware of her father, and presses her arm to his as she turns the page to reveal the picture of the dark-haired mermaid fading into the depths of an ocean. "She dies," the girl says. "Isn't that sad?"

He cannot bear that gaze upon him any longer, so he rises to his feet, ignoring the stiff pull of his tightened leg muscles. After retrieving a blanket to drape over Joanna's shoulders, he puts on the spare cloak kept by the door. It is easier to breathe once he is away from the cottage and under starlight.

Touching the skin of his throat, he wonders if this is how Jocelyn feels. Like she is suffocating. Drowning?

The thought of the mermaid stays in the back of his mind but he shies away from it. Resolved to be empty of sad thoughts, he crosses the lane and turns into the woodland, no destination in mind and only the need to move. As a beast he would run until his legs grew numb. For the first time in a long while, he longs to have that kind of freedom again.

Through the thick patch of trees the cottage glows dimly, a beacon to guide him home.

{...}

Too soon, the wind begins to carry a hint of laughter, and he is forced to retreat back to the border of trees. Someone whistles in the distance and then, closer, that same someone croons a name like _Beast_; the sudden breath on his ear is not from any wind. He flees to the cottage, heart glad to see a single lit candle in one of its window. He slips inside, shivering because of the phantom in the woods, and sheds his cloak.

"You were gone a while," a voice murmurs out of the dark.

Jim trails to the owner of the voice and sits opposite him at the oak table. The smell of warmed apple cider greets him, along with the tired eyes of Joanna's father. Leonard sets an extra mug in front of him and pours cider into from a pitcher. Fine tremors run through the man's hands. He wraps his own hands around the mug out of comfort rather than thirst.

Leonard takes a healthy swallow of cider before pushing his mug aside. The man then grunts softly to himself, using a hand to rub slow circles at his left temple.

Jim is content to watch him.

"You went out barefoot again." Leonard shifts under his bold stare. "Didn't I tell you that's a dangerous thing to do?"

"My feet don't get cold."

"Then you can't be human."

He agrees simply, "I'm not."

The man freezes, swallows, and places both of his hands flat upon the tabletop. "No?" Leonard reiterates more quietly.

He shakes his head.

"Then what are you?"

"Beast, but not; human, but not. I don't know. I keep changing." Jocelyn's words echo within his own.

Leonard observes him silently for some time before speaking again. "I don't need more uncertainty in my life, Jim. You have to become one or the other, and stay that way."

"Which do you want me to be?"

"Why do I have to choose?"

"Because what you want matters to me." Finally, he is learning the right words.

"Then become a beast!" the man snaps, suddenly angry, and shoves away from the table. "Be a beast and leave me alone!"

Leonard stumbles to his bedroom in anger, or perhaps because of the too-strong cider; many days ago he would have misunderstood Leonard's response and body language, but now he sees beneath the anger to the hurt. Leonard is not angry at him, only angry at himself.

Somehow this revelation comforts him. He pours the cider back into the pitcher and sets it high on a shelf from Joanna's reach and retreats to the loft. Sleep comes swiftly but he dreams of a disembodied voice, reflected in a silver, glass-like mist, calling his name.

{...}

Loud voices break through the cloud of early morning. He awakens, recognizing one of the voices instantly; the other voice, after a moment's careful listening, reveals the identity of its owner. But surely it is out-of-place in this small cottage, he thinks.

"You're insane!" Leonard's bellow aspires to reach the cottage roofbeams.

"No," insists Jocelyn's father—_his _father. "She must be returned, and he must stay. I know how it sounds but I say only what needs to be said."

"She's your daughter! You can't simply _give her back_."

"They are both my children, and because I am their father they are caught in half-worlds. Jocelyn has always been restless here, Leonard, and I understand now it isn't any fault of ours. And James—"

He slinks to the edge of the loft, hardly daring to breathe, and grips its edge.

"—is so eager to come home to a human world. Can't you see what we must do?"

On the main floor, Leonard is pacing back and forth like a caged animal. "I won't entertain your madness, sir," the man snarls. "You may be ready to hand your daughter over to some... _thing _but I am not capable of it. She is my heart! Why would I give that up to another?"

His eyes burn upon hearing the finality of those words.

The lord persists, relentess. "Then you have gifted your heart foolishly, as I did years ago to someone who never returned it. Instead she gave me a child to take what little love I had to spare and that child, too, never returned my love. I want back what I gave, Leonard, which is why I want James."

"Leave," Leonard tells his father-in-law.

"Do not make a choice you will come to regret some day," the lord warns him, drawing a fur-lined cloak about his shoulders.

"The only thing I regret is letting you in my house this morn," Jocelyn's husband states flatly. "Now get out."

"Ask her" the lord's says, too certain in his beliefs to grant mercy. "Ask your wife what she wants."

{...}

Leonard corners him by the woodpile where he is splitting logs for the fire place. The activity is much easier for him now, though it leaves a deep ache in his arms afterwards.

"You said you aren't human," the man begins, skipping all pretense.

He lets the ax in his hands slide to the ground. "I said I was not fully human." _Half-world_—the word drifts past him like a sigh of a thought. He is of a half-world, as his father said. His mind has been fully occupied of this morning's confrontation, turning it over, learning its nuances.

"And can you become fully human?" Leonard wants to know.

He nods hesitantly.

Blazing green eyes demand his attention. "How? How does someone part-human, part... fey become only human?"

"A trade," he says without thinking, surprising himself.

The man moves close to him, reaches out and takes his arm in a hard grip. "I need to know what to trade for her. Promise me you will find a way. Promise me, Jim!"

He nods, unable to deny hope to the man he loves. Behind Leonard, the moon is a faint round circle in the daylight of the sky.

{...}

When the moon rises to its full crest, Jim abandons his watch at the cottage window and leaves. Joanna comes running after him so he stops at the border between settlement and wilderness; thinking back, if he had been sure of himself, he would have stopped her that day of their meeting, would have handed her over to Leonard and slunk into the forest, never to meet Jocelyn or set himself on this path he now walks.

The child says fearfully, "Where are you going? Don't you want dinner?"

Not knowing what else to do, he leans down and kisses her cheek, un-fisting her hands from his clothes.

"Will you come back?" she whispers insistently, voice on the verge of trembling.

He nods.

But she cries, "Liar! He said you won't come back! Oh, it's not fair!" She sobs then, kicks dirt at his bare feet and shoves at him before hurtling back into the cottage, slamming its door shut in her wake.

Puzzling over her behavior, he walks a path worn their happy, playful trampling over weeks past until it becomes to an untouched stretch of wet snow. Soon, a gentle taste of magic in the air tugs him forward and he relaxes, giving himself over to its guidance. The Winter Queen is waiting. She will not lead him astray now.

The trees part to a clearing, one which he had not known existed in this area of the woods. He goes to the center of it and kneels.

The Winter Queen regards his silent supplication with midnight eyes. "You are changed."

He lifts his shoulders in a helpless gesture. "You changed me." And she might change him again, this they both know.

But the Winter Queen presses, "You did not bring all of yourself. Where is your heart, beast?"

He lifts his head to observe her. "It is—" He closes his eyes briefly and sees a dark-haired man with a heartbroken face. "I couldn't keep it."

She reaches down to touch the golden curl of hair over one of his ears. It is a wondering gesture, almost mournful, but she withdraws her curious touch as quickly as she gives it.

"You have a question," she says softly. "Ask."

"To become fully human, what must a half-human trade?"

The Winter Queen's eyes are sharp like nettles. "She must trade her twin."

Without warning, the air is gone. His chest feels tight and hollow.

_...trade her twin._

_Promise me you will find a way!_

"What is your name?" The question is calm but careful, an Old Way, a ritual never to be denied.

Again he hears, _Promise me you will find a way! _The echo of Leonard's desperation will not leave him alone.

He has his true name. It speaks of his stolen past, of a future he could have; the identity is rightfully his to take but in the learning of it, he gained something deeper and more meaningful. It is this new, sweetly painful thing, tucked away with the gift of his heart, which shapes his answer:

"I have no name."

Her eyes understand though she reminds him, "Only a beast has no name."

"Yes," he agrees. "That is what I am; forever a beast."

He closes his eyes again, thinking of the timbre of Leonard's voice, even when it was cold with fury, and the scent of Leonard on his clothes; of how little things like that make him feel like he is home.

Will that voice change with time? Can a scent be forgotten?

This is what envelops him—the bitter-sweetness of parting—as he waits for imprisonment.

But time stretches and nothing happens. He opens his eyes, surprised. Magic is oppressive between he and his captor, at its most bitter, yet he remains untouched, still kneeling in the snow. The Winter Queen is unconcerned with him, he gathers too slowly. Turning, he tracks her gaze to find what he does not expect—and draws in a quick, very human breath.

_No._

Two shadow people emerge reluctantly from the backdrop of the dark woodland, separating into Leonard and Jocelyn. The plainly dressed tailor, cloak missing and hair askew, visibly tightens his hold on his wife's hand and stops short as wild magic sparks and spirals.

The Winter Queen's hand jerks, the first ungraceful movement he has ever seen from her. Then the moonlight fire in her hair recedes and her presence seems to darken; but her power is not fading, it is leaving her to go elsewhere.

To Jocelyn.

Leonard shrinks away without moving, eyes large with fear. The man's voice, however, is oddly steady. "His name," speaks the tailor, "is James Tiberius—" Leonard's voice catches.

Something bends painfully under the power of the beast's true name. The woman at Leonard's side releases a small breath, like a whimper.

"—and her name is Jocelyn," he finishes in a whisper. "_My Jocelyn_," Leonard repeats, turning to his wife in sudden, evident desolation.

She is already gone, though her fingers are still tangled in her husband's. Her eyes are midnight; her hair aflame. Moonlight polishes her face into an ethereal mask.

Jocelyn is more beautiful than ever—and the merest whisper of a human.

Jim's heart pounds. He puts a hand to his chest to feel the power of it, thinking that it has returned to him.

A soft wind sighs as the Winter Queen utters the name of her child. "Jocelyn."

Jocelyn steps toward her, answering the Queen's call as helplessly as her half-brother always has; but unlike her half-brother, her eyes are full of naked longing. She is only halted from leaving behind her half-world by the tether of Leonard's hand. Jocelyn turns to her husband, face framed in the light of her mother's power.

For a seemingly endless moment, they look at one another; then at last Leonard says in a tremble of words, "Okay, darlin'." He lifts her hand, presses his mouth to the back of it, and lets her go.

She passes by Jim like she is floating, eyes fixed forward and a dreamy part to her lips, shedding the last of her humanity like a trail of tiny stars into the snow.

Another winter star is born; the Queen and her daughter are almost indistinguishable, expect for the color of their hair: one black coal while the other burns golden. Behind Jim, Leonard makes a sound, a shuddering of sorrow.

"You have been named," the Winter Queen says to her beast in his beast-language. "You can no longer be bound."

He asks, "Is Jocelyn bound to you in my place?"

"No," the Winter Queen tells him. "It is the Red One who laid claim to my child upon her birth, for I had begged of him to let me have my mortal lover and all desires have a price. I gave her to her father so she might live freely. The Red One could not take her, for a changeling is meant to be what it is not, not what it is. Yet the deception will never be easily forgiven." Her eyes speak of a danger. "Beware, James."

Jocelyn holds him, too, in her gaze and repeats her mother's warning: "Beware the redbird. To protect my child, beware, Tiberius."

She shares a look with the Winter Queen, something unspoken passing between them, and they turn away, already stepping upon a path no mortal eye can see. As Jocelyn and her mother fade into moonlight, a keen rises.

He hurries to Leonard, catching him as the man's legs buckle under grief. Leonard hides his face against Jim's chest, and a sob rattles them both. "_Jocelyn_" comes the keen again.

Jim presses his cheek against Leonard's dark head. "I am not Jocelyn," he murmurs, rocking the man. "I am Jim. Leonard's Jim." The man in his arms is crying too hard to listen, but it matters not. "I will not leave you," he continues. "I will not leave, Leonard."

_Leonard!_

He jerks his head up to listen.

_Leonard, leonard, leonard! Leonard and the beast!_

Small chirp-like sounds.

A red, pointy face peeks out from beneath a thistle patch and cocks its head at the pair of humans. It opens its beak and chortles.

_Can't get something for nothing! What does a snow girl give for a friendly beast?_

He tightens his hold on Leonard, a pounding in his ears. "What does a snow girl give?"

_She gives away her Papa's heart!_

It dives back into the thistle and bramble patch, laughing uproariously.

Some time later, it matters not how long, Leonard stirs in his arms and finally pulls back to wipe his face though his eyes are still leaking tears. They say nothing as they stand up; Leonard sways in place, eyes glassy and wet, face hollow. He draws the dark-haired man's arm over his shoulders, asking quietly, "Home?"

Leonard nods.

{...}

Joanna is waiting for them when they stumble through the cottage door; he sags under almost the entirety of Leonard's weight but does not dare let the man go. She looks from her father's grief-stricken face to his sad one and drops her eyes. Her reaction confirms his suspicion that she is the one who sent Leonard—and her mother—chasing after him. How had she known about the Winter Queen's spell?

He shudders, thinking of the redbird.

Leonard seems to force himself to regain some of his strength. He draws his daughter to his side, saying, "Come to bed, Jo."

"With you?"

He nods.

She adds tentatively, "And Jim can come too?"

Her father nods again, obviously too exhaused to think about what she is asking.

Joanna holds out her hand to Jim. "Let's go to bed, Sockless."

He links their fingers, unable to protest, not really wanting to, and the three of them walk together to that one room of the cottage he knows, from now on, will be his privilege to see. He vows then and there to protect what is most precious to him.

_Beware the redbird._

Joanna climbs into her father's bed, tucking the blankets around Leonard before snuggling up to her friend's side.

Beware, indeed.

**[+++++]**

I had finished typing some minutes ago and the silence in the bedroom was deafening. When I proceeded to save my work and, after another moment's hesitation, close out the word processor, a voice asked sharply, "What are you doing?"

I turned to Spock. "It's complete."

He stared. "It cannot be! What kind of ending is _that?_"

I shrugged. "An ominous ending."

Now Spock glared. "No," he insisted, unexpectedly passionate.

His eyes were brighter, I noticed, than they had ever been. Strange.

"This is not acceptable to me—I mean, to _Faerie's _standards. I demand a wedding!"

And he thinks human expectations are ridiculous. I asked too innocently, "Whose?"

He gestured wildly at the computer desk. "Theirs!"

"Nope," I said and hit the off-button of the laptop with satisfaction. "Sorry, Spock. My story, my rules, _my ending_."

He did not like this answer. I didn't realize what a menacing shadow the Sidhe could cast until he was looming over me with glittering eyes and an intriguingly vibrant aura.

"You will comply," he said darkly, "or I will inform the High Council of the Court you have failed to produce a fairy tale of quality."

Poor Spock. I smiled disarmingly. "I'll make you a deal, m'dear."

His menacing shadow shrank. "A deal?" Now he sounded cautious—but hopeful. It amused me that he seemed to need his happy Jim-and-Bones ending like any regular old shipper.

"You must tell your High Council this: while I am a perfectly legitimate and capable writer, I am _not _available to create stories for them. I have an aversion, you understand, to writing under coercion or at my peril. I expect you to prevent such a future scheme if necessary."

He said nothing. I didn't expect him to.

I concluded cheerfully, "In return, on my posting date, I will present a wonderfully fascinating, thrilling tale in which you can practically create its happy ending yourself!"

He eyed me. He eyed my desk (for reasons I could not fathom—there was nothing special about the desk; it certainly didn't bite or lie). At great length, the Sidhe agreed. We did not shake hands or pinky-swear but it was a near thing.

When he left to spread the good news of my success (I imagined he would phrase it as _his _success of wrangling a decent piece of fiction out of a human), I laughed to myself. I made a late dinner, ate, cleaned up, and laughed to myself some more.

Then I rebooted the laptop knowing exactly how I wanted to flesh out my story.

**[+++++]**

There you have it.

As promised, Spock, I have told a tale of Faerie; to be more precise, I have told a tale of you. I will end it here and thereby leave this happily-ever-after (of my well-being) to your discretion. Since you are so insistent upon happy endings, I anticipate you will do your utmost to ensure our little tale concludes pleasantly enough for me.

My thanks in advance,

klmeri

THE END


End file.
